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 rhe Making of a 
 Newspaper Man 
 
 SAMUEL G. BLYTHE 
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 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 HENRY ALTEAIUS COMPANY 
 
COPYKIGHT, 1912, BY 
 
 Howard E. Altemus 
 
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 ©CI.A328619 
 
The Making of a Newspaper Man 
 
 CHAPTER I n ff 
 
 f 
 
 THERE was to be a murder trial at the little 
 county-seat where I was born and where 
 I lived as a boy. I was just eighteen 
 at the time. Murder trials were infrequent in 
 that county and this one attracted wide local at- 
 tention. The city papers were preparing to give 
 some space to it and the county papers had 
 printed columns about it. 
 
 It was the first murder trial I remember much 
 about, though when I was a small boy they 
 hanged a man in the jailyard, which enlivening 
 and novel occurrence had set all the small boys 
 in the village to making gallows and hanging 
 cats and dogs, and even fieldmice and rabbits^ 
 
 3 
 
 ( :-J 
 
4 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 Once we built a big gallows and tried to hang a 
 calf, but that didn't work very well — and the 
 man who owned the calf caused some acute dis- 
 comfort to the amateur executioners. Until he 
 caught me, I never realized how much power 
 there is concealed in the human leg and foot 
 when the foot is shod with a cowhide boot. Still, 
 murder trials and murders were always a fruit- 
 ful topic of boyish conversation. Instead of 
 using a trap for the condemned man to fall 
 through to eternity, the local plan was to jerk 
 him into the hereafter by means of a big weight 
 fastened to a rope running over the top of the 
 gallows and released by a spring. The weight 
 was an iron atf air and the tradition was that 
 it weighed three hundred and sixty-five pounds. 
 At any rate, it was kept in the cellar of the court- 
 house ; and as the frequent sheriffs always had 
 boys in their families the cellar of the court- 
 house was a favorite place of resort. Conse- 
 quently, when conversation languished, the 
 weight was always there to furnish inspiration 
 for speculation as to whom it would be used on 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 5 
 
 next and the coordinated and congenial theme 
 of murders and murderers. 
 
 Of course, having arrived at the mature age 
 of eighteen, I had long since ceased foregather- 
 ing in the court-house cellar and trying to lift 
 the weight and discussing murders and the last 
 hanging; but when this case was moved for 
 trial, and the farmers began to come in, I was 
 as much interested as I had been in the hanging 
 of the unfortunate years before, and so were 
 all my companions and friends. Our nearest 
 city was thirty miles away and the daily papers 
 came in on the morning and evening trains. 
 They devoted one page to the news of the 
 country through which they circulated and had 
 correspondents in each village of importance. 
 The correspondent for the biggest of the morn- 
 ing papers from our town was a young lawyer, 
 a warm friend of mine. It so happened he had 
 other business to attend to at the time of the 
 trial and he asked me to report it for the city 
 paper. 
 
 My father was editor of one of the two weekly 
 
6 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 papers in our town, and naturally I had fussed 
 about the printing office a good bit. Moreover, 
 I always received better marks for compositions 
 than the other boys, and my rhetoric teacher 
 had prophesied a great future for me. Also, I 
 had secretly determined to be a newspaper man, 
 although my father objected strenuously, say- 
 ing the business was no good. So, when the 
 regular correspondent asked me to do his work, 
 I jumped eagerly at the chance. The arrange- 
 ment was that I was to have the pay for the 
 work that he would have received had he done 
 it. The emolument for the literature of coun- 
 try correspondence in that particular city news- 
 paper office was four dollars a column, which 
 seemed a princely compensation, for I was to 
 have a front seat at the reporters^ table, was 
 to hear the whole trial ; and likely as not there 
 would be some city reporters there with whom 
 I might get acquainted and thus find an oppor- 
 tunity to discuss my ambition to be a regular 
 reporter myself. I would have worked for 
 nothing. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 7 
 
 The trial began on Monday, and I made a 
 longhand running report of the proceedings, 
 got it in the afternoon mail and telegraphed a 
 short, skeletonized summary of what happened 
 after the mail closed. I have filed several mil- 
 lion words of telegraphic dispatches to news- 
 papers since that day, twenty-five years ago, ^..S 
 from all parts of the world ah"d "on all sorts of / ^ 
 big stones; bnt I have never filed a dispatch if S 
 that seemed quite as important and sensational 
 as that. I was all puffed up when I handed it 
 to the telegraph operator, who had known me 
 since I was a baby, and she was greatly inter- 
 ested and promised to send it right away. Like- 
 wise, I have dealt with and known hundreds of 
 telegraph and cable operators in my time, have 
 fought with them, coaxed them, cursed them, 
 bought them, cultivated them, loafed with them ; 
 but that dear lady who sent my first newspaper 
 dispatch, while I hung around nervously waiting 
 to see her finish it, remains in my mind as the 
 highest type of the exponents of the business 
 which I was to be so interested in in later life. 
 
8 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 Telegraph operators have befriended me, 
 have balked me, have put my stuff ahead and 
 given me highly useful information to my great 
 credit in the home office, and have held back 
 my dispatches to my great discredit in the same 
 important place ; they have endangered their 
 jobs to pull me through and have cost me a 
 job or two by utter cussedness. Some of the 
 best fellows I ever knew were in the telegraph 
 business, and are yet; but never a one of them 
 did so much for me, I still think, as the lady 
 who sent my first two hundred words and told 
 me it was quite intelligent. 
 
 I was at the post-office next morning an hour 
 before the papers came, and when they finally 
 did arrive I grabbed the first one I could get. 
 I was much chagrined to find that news of Con- 
 gress and the Legislature and a prize fight were 
 prominently displayed on that first page. There 
 wasn 't a line about the murder trial. I hurried 
 in to consult the postmaster and asked him if 
 he was sure my letter got away. He was sure 
 and suggested it was possible the murder-trial 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 9 
 
 story might be on some other page of the paper 
 than the first. I hadn^t thought of that. It had 
 never occurred to me that my dispatch could 
 possibly be any other place than on 'the first 
 column of the first page. I have had that feel- 
 ing a good many times since, too. 
 
 I found the dispatch on page three, two col- 
 umns, with a four-line head. I read it eagerly, 
 lamenting a few typographical errors, and feel- 
 ing much discouraged because the editors had 
 cut out half a column or so of the very best 
 part^ — as I thought. The papers came in at nine 
 o^clock in the morning and court began at ten. 
 I spent that hour swelling around on Main 
 Street, feeling quite sure everybody had read 
 my story, and thinking perhaps the judge and 
 the lawyers would say something about it. Be- 
 sides, it meant almost eight dollars in money 
 for me — a sum I had never thought any person 
 could make for a day's work. Also, it clinched 
 me for the newspaper business. I was a born 
 journalist. There was no doubt of that. And 
 it was a cinch. Eight dollars for a few hours' 
 
10 THE MAXING OF A 
 
 work that was really play ! Nobody in the village 
 made so much working for wages. 
 
 I worked my head off that week and sent in 
 columns that were printed and columns that 
 were not. In the evenings I went to the hotel 
 and talked to the city reporters who were on 
 the story. Much to my surprise, they didn't 
 think newspaper work was a noble profession, 
 highly paid, dignified and supremely important. 
 They said reporting was *^ darned hard work," 
 that the pay was small and the hours long. Also, 
 they said — all of them — their city editors were 
 individually and collectively the mesmest^men 
 on earth, and it was a poor game all round. 
 Later, I entertained the same ideas, especially 
 about the city editors, and had the same ideas 
 entertained, quite extensively, about me when I 
 became a city editor myself. I made almost 
 sixty dollars that week — ^more than I was to 
 make in many a weary week afterward — and 
 had my story on the first page the day the man 
 on trial went on the stand. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 11 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 On Saturday a man who was employed on a 
 Sunday paper in the city where my paper was 
 published — I had begun to talk of it as ^^my'^ 
 paper — came to get a story for Sunday morn- 
 ing. I didn't know it then, but that man was 
 to cross and crisscross my life for several years 
 — principally cross. He sat next to me at the 
 table, and asked me if I was the ^^yap" who 
 had been doing the trial for the ^* Gazette.'' I 
 said I was. ^^ Pretty good for a rube !" he com- 
 mented. I had asked the other city reporters 
 about the chance for getting a job as a regular 
 on the staff of some paper in the city. They 
 told me jobs were scarce, that the penurious 
 proprietors always filled up with a cheap jay 
 from some college when a high-priced man was 
 fired, and advised me, unanimously and pro- 
 fanely, to stick to the village or go on a farm. 
 
12 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 It was a rotten business, anyhow, they said — 
 and nothing, positively nothing, in it. 
 
 Still, the man from the Sunday paper seemed 
 to have different ideas. He was older. He told 
 me he had been in the business for fifteen years 
 and was writing a book about it — a guide for 
 aspirants. Of the book, more later; but I asked 
 him if there was any chance to get a job. He 
 told me confidentially there was going to be a 
 shakeup on the paper I was reporting the trial 
 for ; that he was going back over there as city 
 editor, and that it wouldn't hurt any to go down 
 and apply. He said he would put in a good 
 word for me. 
 
 I could hardly wait for that trial to finish, 
 although I was making six and eight dollars a 
 day out of it. On the day after I sent in my last 
 batch of copy I took the morning train to the 
 city and hurried up to the newspaper office. I 
 had often stood outside that office, which shel- 
 tered the biggest paper in the city and one of 
 the biggest in the state, and wondered if ever 
 I should get a chance to work on it and learn 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 13 
 
 the business there. I asked a man in the count- 
 ing room where the editor's office was. He 
 looked at me curiously and told me it was up 
 another flight. I climbed up, with my heart 
 beating like a pneumatic riveter. 
 
 There was a door with frosted glass in it at 
 the top of the dark stairs, and on the door the 
 magic words ^* Editorial Rooms'' were painted. 
 This was about half past eight in the morning. 
 I knocked on the door. Nobody came. Then 
 I pushed it open and found myself in a long 
 room with the floor littered with torn news- 
 papers, proofsheets, copy paper and all the 
 numerous evidences of work the night before. 
 Nobody was there. 
 
 I noticed a little coop in one corner of the 
 room that held a desk and chair, and at the 
 far end three other rooms. The doors to these 
 rooms were labeled: ^^ Managing Editor," 
 '^Editor" and ^^ Editorial Writers." The long 
 room was crowded with old desks, and along 
 one side there was a table built against the wall, 
 on which there were heaps of the local papers. 
 
14 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 That table was where we used to sleep when 
 we were stuck for the long watch. I thought 
 it a particularly untidy and uninviting place 
 then. Six months later it often seemed to me 
 the softest bed in the city. The door of the 
 little coop in the corner of the big room was 
 labeled ^^City Editor." I knew dimly he was 
 the man I wanted to see. 
 
 I sat down and waited. Presently a boy came 
 in and made a pretense of sweeping up the floor. 
 He was not an attractive boy and not much 
 younger than myself. He looked at the littered 
 room with supreme disgust. 
 
 *^ These dubs must 'a' bin brought up in a 
 barn," he said, ^Hhe way they throw stuff 
 around." 
 
 ''What dubs?" I ventured. 
 
 ''These reporters," he answered. "They 
 gimme a pain! Whatchu want!" 
 
 "I want to see the editor," I answered with 
 such dignity as I could command. 
 
 He stopped sweeping. "Somethin' wrong in 
 d^ pape?" he asked in a more respectful tone. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 15 
 
 *^1 suppose some of them dubs has bin gittin' 
 the wrong dope." 
 
 '*No/' I replied. ^'1 want to get a position 
 on the staff." 
 
 * ' Nothin ' doin % ' ' he asserted. ^ ^ They 's firin ' 
 instid of hirin'." 
 
 Then he went on sweeping and paid no further 
 attention to me. I sat there for nearly three 
 hours and not a person came into that room ex- 
 cept another boy with a big bunch of news- 
 papers. He threw them on a desk and walked 
 out. It hadn't occurred to me that the paper 
 I wanted to work for was a morning paper and 
 that the men worked at night and slept in the 
 daytime. That occurred to me a good many 
 times later, but it didn't dawn on me then. I 
 fancied it must be a snap to work there. They 
 didn't go on until afternoon apparently; and, 
 as everybody quit at six o'clock where I came 
 from, that would mean only a short day. If I 
 could only get a job I knew I should have an 
 easy time. 
 
 About noon the door was pushed violently 
 
16 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 open and a short man with a gray mnstache 
 came in. He was not much more than five feet 
 tall, but he had a massive head and one of the 
 most intelligent faces I have ever seen. He 
 glanced at me and went into the room marked 
 ' ' Editor. ' ^ I heard him moving about the room, 
 and heard him also shout: ^*0h, boy!^' No 
 boy came. He shouted again. Then he said, 
 ^'Damn those boys! They are getting worse 
 all the time ! ' ' and came out into the room where 
 I was sitting. He looked round, took a copy of 
 the morning paper from a desk and went back. 
 If he noticed me at all I wasn't aware of it. 
 
 Nobody came in for another half hour. I 
 could hear the man in the other room swinging 
 back and forth in his chair, could hear news- 
 papers rustling, hear him thump the desk a 
 couple of times and knew from other sounds 
 he was clipping things out of papers. Then I 
 decided I might just as well talk to him as the 
 city editor, who probably didn't get down for 
 an hour or two; and I went timidly into his 
 office. He was tilted away back in his chair, 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 17 
 
 reading a paper and chewing vigorously on 
 something I learned afterward was paper, for 
 I saw him tear strips of it and pnt them into 
 his mouth. 
 
 ''Are you the editor f I asked. 
 
 ''Yes,'^ he said, peering at me over the top 
 of the paper. ' ' What do you want f ' ' 
 
 '*! want a job/' I blurted. 
 
 ''What kind of a job?'' 
 
 "I want to be a reporter." 
 
 He had dropped the paper and was looking 
 at me not unkindly. 
 
 "Have you ever had any experience!" 
 
 "No, sir — that is, not much. I have written 
 some for my father's paper and I reported that 
 murder trial for you." 
 
 He was interested. 
 
 "Are you the man who reported that murder 
 trial 1" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Well," half to himself, "that wasn't so bad 
 — not so bad. What's your name?" 
 
 I told him and he scribbled it down. "All 
 
 2— Newspaper Man. 
 
18 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 right/' he said, picking up his paper and smil- 
 ing at me pleasantly, ^^I'll speak to the city 
 editor abont it. You will hear from him. Good 
 morning.'' 
 
 I suppose I walked out of that room, hut I 
 don't know. It seemed to me I floated out and 
 down those dingy stairs. I was certain I should 
 get a place — and I caromed round the city in a 
 dream until it came traintime. 
 
 When I got home I told my father I thought 
 I could get a place on the local staff of the 
 ^^ Gazette." He shrugged his shoulders. ^^All 
 right," he said; ^^hut it's a poor business." 
 For the next two days I was the first person at 
 the post-office at mailtime and the last to leave. 
 Then came a letter in the morning mail on the 
 third day. It was from the city editor and said 
 the editor had spoken to him of me ; that there 
 was a vacancy on the local staff I could have; 
 that if I wanted it I was to report to him a 
 week from the following Sunday morning. The 
 salary, he added, would be ten dollars a 
 week. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 19 
 
 I dashed down the street to my father's office. 
 <<IVe got it/' I shouted to him as I burst into 
 his office. 
 
 *'Got what?'' he asked. 
 
 "Got a job on the ^Gazette.' '' 
 
 **God help you!" he said, and turned to his 
 writing. 
 
20 THE MAKING OE A 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Money is never particularly plentiful in the 
 family of a country editor and our family was 
 no exception. However, my friend, the young 
 lawyer who had let me sub for him on the mur- 
 der trial and who thus had really secured my 
 job for me, advanced me some out of his scanty 
 store on the check he would get for me at the 
 end of the month ; and at two o ^clock on Sunday 
 week — exactly on the minute — I walked again 
 into that big room. I had been hanging round 
 the foot of the stairs for an hour for fear I 
 might be late. 
 
 There was a man in the little coop in the 
 corner, writing in a black-covered book. Six 
 or seven young men were sitting in the long 
 room, smoking and talking about a scoop the 
 opposition paper had that morning. They paid 
 no attention to me. I stood for a minute and 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 21 
 
 listened to them. From what I could gather it 
 seemed certain there would be a hot time when 
 the managing editor came in. Presently the 
 man in the coop looked up and saw me. 
 
 **Do you want to see meV^ he asked. 
 
 **I want to see the city editor.'^ 
 
 * * Go ahead, ' ^ he said. ^ * I am that unfortunate 
 person.'' I guessed he was thinking about the 
 scoop, too. 
 
 I told him my name and showed him his let- 
 ter to me. 
 
 '^How do?'' he said, sticking out his hand. 
 ^^I'U have an assignment for you presently." 
 
 Then he took me out into the big room and 
 introduced me to the men there. They all 
 greeted me pleasantly — and one man, older than 
 the rest, with much cordiality. I didn't know 
 why then, but I soon learned. My advent re- 
 lieved him of the necessity of writing the local 
 notices — the most despised job on the paper. 
 
 ** Here's the trouble !" sang out the city editor, 
 and the men all flocked round and looked at the 
 black-covered book in which he was writing 
 
22 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 when I first came in. That black-covered book 
 was the assignment book, and opposite each 
 man's name were his assignments for the day. 
 I waited until the men had copied off their tasks 
 and then looked for mine. I was to see the 
 colonel of a local regiment that had returned 
 from camp that morning and get a story, and 
 I was to report a sermon at night. Also, op- 
 posite my name was '4ocal notices.'^ 
 
 I noticed that one man was assigned to 
 do ^'police," another *^ railroads," another 
 ^* hotels," and so on. I soon learned there were 
 regular men on these assignments, as on ^^ courts 
 and city hall" on weekdays, and ^^politicians" 
 and ^^ theatres," and so on; and I wondered 
 when I should get a chance at *^ theatres" or 
 ** police," feeling myself well qualified to cope 
 with either or both right off the bat. However, 
 it wasn't long until I found out it would be 
 some time before I got theatres or police, or 
 anything but the dub assignments. No matter 
 what I thought of my own abilities, the city 
 editor positively refused to consider me except 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 23 
 
 as a dub, who must be taught^ — and I am quite 
 sure lie was right, looking back at it now. 
 
 The reporters interested me. Aside from the 
 city reporters who were up in my village on the 
 murder trial, they were the first real reporters 
 I had ever seen. They were young, energetic, 
 free-and-easy chaps, with a most amazing — to 
 me — knowledge of all that was going on in the 
 city, with the most contem]3tuous opinion of the 
 big-wigs of the place of whom I had read for 
 years and whom I imagined to be most remark- 
 able citizens, free of opinion, full of youth and 
 youthful cynicism, calling big politicians and 
 city officials and merchants and others of the 
 prominent by their first names, cocksure of every 
 statement and bored by things that were new 
 and marvelous to me. They all smoked and 
 most of them drank a little. They knew the 
 night life as well as the day life. They spoke 
 familiarly with policemen and firemen. They 
 knew the cafe-keepers and all the local charac- 
 ters of whom I had been reading — knew them 
 intimately, it seemed — and disapproved of most 
 
24 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 of them. I wondered if I should ever get to 
 the dizzy height of calling the chief of police 
 *^ Jim" and referring to the mayor as ^^Cornie/' 
 
 What an underpaid, happy-go-lncky, careless 
 and, in the case of several, brilliant crowd it 
 was ! Not one of them had a cent, or expected 
 to have one, except on payday. All lived from 
 hand to mouth. All worked fourteen, sixteen, 
 seventeen hours a day at the most grueling work, 
 reporting on a paper in a small city where many 
 yawning columns must be filled each day whether 
 there is anything going on or not, and all loyal 
 to the core to that paper, fighting its battles, 
 working endlessly to put a scoop over on the 
 opposition morning paper, laboring until four 
 o'clock in the morning for from ten to fifteen 
 dollars a week, doing anything that came along 
 from a state convention to a church wedding. 
 
 Everything was grist that came to that mill 
 and those boys were the millers. They are scat- 
 tered now to all parts of the earth. Some have 
 stuck to the newspaper business and some have 
 left it; but they were a brave crowd of young- 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 25 
 
 sters then and they took me up and made me 
 one of them, and taught me the rudiments of 
 my business. I worked with and against the 
 best reporters in this country and abroad for 
 many years, but I never found a crowd like 
 that — my first colleagues, with whom I lived and 
 borrowed and played and worked when I was 
 both a cub and a dub — good friends, good re- 
 porters, good fellows! 
 
 I went up to see the colonel of the returned 
 regiment. Much to my surprise, he did not seem 
 awed when I told him so distinguished a journ- 
 alist as a reporter for the ^^ Gazette'^ had 
 vouchsafed to call on him, but asked rather 
 shortly, ^'Well, what do you wantT' I told 
 him and he gave me a long story, detailing the 
 splendid achievements of his command and not 
 omitting his own great part in the success of 
 the affair. I hurried back to the office and wrote 
 until my arm ached. When I turned in my copy 
 the city editor looked at the bale of it and said : 
 *'Gosh! What did he do? Kill somebody? I 
 only wanted a couple of sticks. '^ 
 
26 THE MAKINGS OF A 
 
 "You wait,'^ I thouglit, "until you see now 
 important that article is and tlien you'll change 
 your opinion. ' ' However, he didn 't wait. With 
 a sick heart, I saw him throw page after page 
 of it on the floor. Next morning they printed 
 about three inches of my article and not much 
 of it resembled what I had written. That was 
 a jolt, but I had a harder one. The sermon I 
 was to report was by a returned missionary 
 bishop. I argued that, inasmuch as they wanted 
 a report at all, they must want a good one, and 
 I labored hard making notes of the sermon and 
 in transcribing them at the office. Then I got 
 my second lesson. Sermons are covered only 
 because nothing else much goes on in a small 
 city on Sunday — or were in my cub days; and 
 if any live news comes in the sermons are cut 
 down. Some live news came in that night — a 
 police case that involved somebody well known ; 
 and next morning my report of the sermon was 
 reduced about ninety per cent, when it appeared 
 in type. 
 
 I didn't get to my room until four o'clock that 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 27 
 
 morning, but I got up at seven and went out and 
 bought a copy of the paper. I turned eagerly 
 to the local pages and found my two little items. 
 I was the proudest boy in the United States. 
 To be sure they had not appreciated my articles 
 at their full worth; but they printed some of 
 them right in the paper, in the local sections, 
 and I was a regular reporter on a regular paper ! 
 I wouldn't have traded jobs with Charles A. 
 Dana! I thought everybody was pointing me 
 out as the brilliant young journalist of the ^* Ga- 
 zette'' as I walked down to the office, where, 
 by the way, I arrived three hours ahead of time 
 and occupied my leisure in reading and reread- 
 ing my contributions to the sum of the world's 
 wisdom that morning. I have them yet, pasted 
 in a scrapbook — 1>wo gems of English literature ! 
 Nothing I have ever read or written compares 
 with those two items — the one about the regi- 
 ment and the other about the missionary bishop. 
 
28 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 I soon discovered that all the ideas I had 
 about the ease and dignity of the work of a re- 
 porter on a daily paper in a small city were 
 entirely erroneous. We reported at the office at 
 one o 'clock and took our afternoon assignments. 
 These we were expected to have covered and 
 the copy in before six. We reported again at 
 seven-thirty and got our night assignments, and 
 the copy for those was to be in by eleven or 
 twelve. Then the proofs began coming and no- 
 body could go until the last local proof was read 
 and revised. This was generally about one or 
 half past. Then the long- watch man stayed until 
 four, catching that assignment two or three 
 times a week and watching the police station 
 and the fire alarm for any late crime or fire 
 that might occur. 
 
 Expense bills were carefully scrutinized. No 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 29 
 
 reporter was supposed to take a street car if 
 his assignment was within a mile of the office 
 unless there was a great rush, and all street 
 cars stopped at midnight. Thus, if there was a 
 late fire the reporter who had it was expected 
 to run his mile and run back in time to catch 
 the last form. If the fire was over a mile away, 
 in a dangerous district, the city editor would 
 allow a cab, but not too often, for the old man 
 downstairs thought cabs and reporters not com- 
 patible with the economical conduct of his great 
 organ of public opinion and instruction. 
 
 Naturally the new man on the staff was given 
 the drudgery. He had to hold copy on proof 
 and read the revises. He was stuck with the 
 long watch oftener than anybody else. There 
 were seven reporters and each man had a day 
 off, thus leaving six to get all the news in a city 
 of almost a hundred thousand people, and, as 
 the paper was a big one, to write enough stuff 
 to fill twenty-five or thirty columns — and some- 
 times more. I frequently had fourteen or fifteen 
 assignments in a day — ^not big ones, but four- 
 
30 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 teen or fifteen places that had to be visited, 
 whether they produced copy or not. 
 
 Then there were the ' ' local notices. ' ' How we 
 hated those! They were advertisements, in 
 news-paragraph style, that ran from ^yq to fif- 
 teen lines each and were inserted on the local 
 pages. Each day had its quota and tabs telling 
 what was to be written each day hung on hooks 
 in the city editor's room. They were for shoe 
 stores, drug stores, all kinds of stores ; and the 
 advertising man guaranteed they would be 
 ^* bright and snappy.'' Think of working all 
 the afternoon and writing two columns of stuff, 
 and then being obliged to go to the hook, get 
 the tabs and write ^^ bright and snappy" items 
 about Beegin's shoes and Boogin's bread, run- 
 ning from fiYQ to fifteen lines! Those ^^ local 
 notices" gave me my first pause about the de- 
 sirability of the newspaper business as a career. 
 
 Ten dollars a week, with no other revenue, is 
 not a princely income. Still, under the coaching 
 of my brethren, who were living on it, I soon 
 (learned how to stretch that ten dollars to cover 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 31 
 
 seven days. There was a good place where they 
 sold yon for three dollars a ticket which entitled 
 you to twenty-one meals. Inasmuch as we all 
 slept late, we had an arrangement whereby the 
 landlady left a luncheon on the table at midnight 
 in lieu of breakfast. That settled the eating 
 problem. By bunking together, two men could 
 get a pretty fair room in those days for four 
 dollars, or two dollars each. That used up half 
 of the ten, but it provided the sterner neces- 
 saries. There was a friendly tailor who would 
 make you a suit of clothes for twenty-six dollars 
 — a dollar down and a dollar a week. I never 
 knew how he did it; but that tailor had things 
 calculated to such a nicety that at the end of 
 the twenty-six weeks it was absolutely neces- 
 sary to buy a new suit or have the old one drop 
 off you in tatters — and we were always in debt 
 to him. Taking out the tailor's dollar — ^which 
 we did not always do, by the way — we had four 
 dollars left for riotous living, shoes, laundry, 
 tobacco and everything else. Of course some 
 of the boys got twelve dollars and one or two 
 
32 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 fifteen. The city editor was a plntocrat — lie got 
 twenty-five; and the assistant city editor, who 
 was a reporter every day except the city editor's 
 day off, got seventeen. 
 
 I remember the day I drew my first week's 
 salary. The assistant city editor was at the 
 cashier's window with me. The cashier, who 
 was a good fellow and wonld advance a dollar 
 or two in case of dire necessity, shoved our en- 
 velopes out face down. They were small manila 
 envelopes, with the name of the recipient writ- 
 ten across the middle and the sum within in 
 figures on the upper left-hand corner. I took 
 my ten with a fluttering heart. It was my first 
 salary as a regular reporter. It meant, too, that 
 I had made good enough to last a week, at any 
 rate, and probably could worry through another 
 week. The assistant city editor ostentatiously 
 turned his envelope over and showed me that 
 magnificent '^$17.00" on the corner. It was 
 wealth beyond compare. '^My boy," he said 
 in a very patronizing manner, ^4f you ever 
 get so you can pull down that much you 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 33 
 
 will be a real newspaper man/' I thought 
 so too. 
 
 The city editor earned his twenty-five dollars. 
 In addition to giving out the assignments and 
 being responsible for the local, he was super- 
 visor of the sporting pages and the theatrical 
 news, read all the copy — there were no such per- 
 sons as copy-readers then in the small cities — 
 wrote the headlines, made up his pages and took 
 the kicks from the managing editor when the 
 opposition scooped us. He was a busy young 
 person, with a sour Yiew of life and an inor- 
 dinate desire for something that was exclusive, 
 by which he meant something the other morning 
 paper did not have. Likewise, he was always 
 embroiled in bitter warfare with the foreman 
 of the composing room, who was constantly try- 
 ing to leave out some of his local, and as con- 
 stantly at odds with the reporters, each of whom 
 fought always to get space for his particular 
 story or stories and gloomed darkly and 
 talked of the decadence of the game when 
 the city editor told him to make a quarter of 
 
 3 — Newspaper Man. 
 
34 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 a column of the yarn lie hoped to write a 
 column about. 
 
 Everybody was eager and enthusiastic. All 
 were bound up in their paper. They growled 
 and talked privately of the penuriousness of the 
 proprietor, and the cussedness of the city editor, 
 and the malignant managing editor, and the 
 f eeble-mindedness of the editor ; but they were 
 ready and willing to fight when anybody else 
 intimated their paper was not the greatest in 
 the state. They worked incredibly hard for pit- 
 tances, walking miles and miles in snow and 
 rain and heat, and toiling long hours through 
 the night ; but their complaints were all among 
 themselves. To outsiders they were a gay and 
 debonair bunch of young chaps, engaged in 
 getting out the best paper of them all; and 
 they took as much joy in *^ putting one over'^ on 
 the opposition paper as they would in getting a 
 thousand-dollar legacy. It was a good atmos- 
 phere to begin in. Likewise, it gave an ex- 
 perience of all sides of the business ; for there 
 wasn't a man in the lot who couldn't write heads, 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 35 
 
 read proof, read and edit telegrapli, make up, 
 write advertising, write special articles and do 
 any story passably well, no matter whether it 
 was about a prize fight or a church convention. 
 
 The routine assignments were divided under 
 broad general heads. There was a police man, 
 a court man, a railroad man — and so on. My 
 first regular assignment was ^^ railroads, under- 
 takers and morgue. ' ' That meant that I was ex- 
 pected, in addition to any other assignments the 
 city editor might wish me to cover, to visit all 
 the railroad offices ; go to the station when the 
 big trains were due; go to the big undertakers 
 and copy the death certificates ; visit the morgue 
 twice a day to see if any bodies were there and 
 where they came from. It meant, also, a walk 
 of six or seven miles each afternoon, for no re- 
 porter could use a street car, except at his own 
 expense, on a routine assignment. 
 
 The city wasn 't much of a railroad centre ; so 
 my duties consisted in visiting the railroad 
 offices, where the agents invariably tried to hand 
 out advertisements about excursions and such 
 
36 THE MAiaNG OF A 
 
 in the guise of nevs — and rarely liad any real 
 news — and visiting the stations and talking to 
 the station master and dispatchers and other 
 officials. These visits usually resulted in the ex- 
 citing information that ^^Mr. McGuffin's special 
 <?ar, Lotus, went east on Number Seventeen last 
 night," though every time the brakeman or en- 
 gineers or anybody else gave an excursion or 
 a picnic I was expected to boom it for days. 
 Then, after the little grist of local railroad 
 items — occasionally there was a good story — I 
 read the exchanges and clipped a dozen or so 
 railroad items of general interest, which were 
 pasted up and followed the local news under a 
 headline like *^ Clicks from the Eails," or some 
 other nifty caption. 
 
 Unless the death certificate was of some im- 
 portant person, when it was necessary to hunt 
 up facts for an obituary, the news secured at 
 the undertaker's shop was written in stereotyped 
 form, giving the name, age, time of death and 
 place of funeral of the deceased. These were 
 run under a standing headline, **The Dead." 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 37 
 
 There were about twenty undertakers who must 
 be visited each day, in widely separated sections 
 of the city. If you took a chance and skipped 
 one it was always certain the opposition rail- 
 road, undertakers-and-morgue man would visit 
 that identical place that day and get a prom- 
 inent death good for a spread obituary. After 
 I had been on this run for a week I nearly lost 
 my job by writing an obituary of some esteemed 
 person and leaving out his name. It got into 
 the paper that way and the scholarly managing 
 editor threw fits and profanity all over the 
 office. 
 
38 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 It was before the days of typewriters or lino- 
 type machines and my writing was bad. How 
 I envied one of our reporters who wrote a per- 
 fect hand and turned in copper-plate copy ! He 
 was a great favorite with the printers and used 
 to go up to the composing room and swap stories 
 with them; while, whenever I went through 
 those sacred precincts, the printers used to rap 
 with their composing sticks on their cases, an 
 emphatic and disconcerting sign of typograph- 
 ical disapproval. One day the foreman reported 
 in the local room that Shorty Anderson, a 
 printer, had thrown a '^take'' of my copy back 
 on his desk, contemptuously saying: '^1 can't 
 set that junk! It ain't copy. It's music — and 
 I ain't got no music characters in my case."" 
 And another time the chapel held a meeting 
 to protest against my copy; but here Shorty 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 39 
 
 Anderson was my friend. I had supplied him 
 with a convivial Latin motto for the saloon of 
 a friend of his, and he came to the rescue, urging 
 that the young fellow be given a chance. So I 
 wasn't discharged. 
 
 Presently a new man came on and the city 
 editor passed the railroads, undertakers and 
 morgue and the local notices to him. I was given 
 police and soon was on terms of easy familiarity 
 with the chief — whom I called ** Jim" — the cap- 
 tains, the lieutenants and the detectives. We 
 discussed crime learnedly — but I soon learned 
 that the idea of the police was to print nothing 
 about what happened in a criminal way until 
 they had * investigated''; and as I broke this 
 rule several times they came to look on me with 
 suspicion, and it was necessary to get another 
 reporter to do ** police." I had become reason- 
 ably expert at proofreading and could write 
 my own headlines. Our biggest head, except on 
 a most sensational story, was what we called 
 a four-head — a line, a pyramid, another line and 
 a twenty-word pyramid to close it up. The 
 
40 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 first four-head of wMch I was really proud v-^as 
 over the story of the death of a telegraph line- 
 man. His name was Finnegan and he fell off a 
 pole. I remember the first two parts of the 
 head and I thought it looked fine in print : 
 
 FATAL FOR FINNEGAN 
 
 Feakful Fall of Fully 
 FiFTY-FiYE Feet! 
 
 The long watch lasted until four o^clock in 
 the morning, which was the time the presses 
 started. All the rest left about two o ^clock, un- 
 less there was a penny-ante game going, which 
 there usually was after the proofs were all done. 
 The long-watch man was expected to go over 
 to the central police station twice and see if 
 anything had happened. There was a fire-alarm 
 gong in the office. On snowy or rainy nights we 
 usually took a chance and called up the police 
 station by telephone. On nights when we were 
 very tired, as we usually were, the long-watch 
 man stretched out on the file table along the 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 41 
 
 side of the room and went to sleep, relying on 
 the friendly night man at the station to call up 
 if anything happened. One night when I had 
 the long watch I went to sleep on the files and 
 went home at half -past four thinking all was 
 well. It so happened that shortly after our own 
 presses started that morning one of our press- 
 men fell off the press and broke his neck. The 
 full story appeared in the opposition paper, but 
 our paper had never a word — and the accident 
 happened in our own building! I never quite 
 understood how I held on to my job after that — 
 but I did. However, I heard a few things about 
 myself from the managing editor. 
 
 Naturally, in so small a city, there was not 
 enough purely local news to fill the many col- 
 umns set aside for local in our paper, and each 
 week each reporter was ordered to write two or 
 three ^* specials, '^ which were stories of a semi- 
 news nature or on any interesting topic or thing 
 that had come under his attention. If they could 
 be made humorous so much the better. This 
 was great training for young writers. We pro- 
 
42 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 duced all sorts of yarns and I got to be pretty 
 good at it, having a fertile imagination and being 
 new to the city, where odd things the others 
 passed by attracted me. 
 
 Also, I worked off some of the compositions 
 the rhetoric teacher had commended. We had 
 one star man at this sort of thing, although 
 most of the specials turned in and printed were 
 very fair as newspaper copy, and some were 
 brilliant. I remember my pride in this star 
 man, as the youngest member of the staff, when 
 he put over his famous ** Mystery of Lock Sixty- 
 Six" series. He got a hand and arm of a dead 
 man from a medical student he knew and 
 chopped off several fingers and cut the arm in 
 two or three pieces. Then he went out to Lock 
 Sixty- Six on the canal and dropped in a finger, 
 shortly afterward discovering said &[igeT float- 
 ing in the water. He came back and wrote a 
 masterly story about his discovery. He specu- 
 lated graphically on the problems of where 
 the finger came from, whose finger it was and 
 why the police had not reported a missing 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 43 
 
 man. The police, by the way, pooh-poohed the 
 whole story. 
 
 Next day he found two more fingers and 
 whooped it up again. The police were stirred. 
 The other papers took it up. Next day he 
 dropped in and took out a section of an arm; 
 and when his third story appeared the entire 
 police department was running round in circles 
 and the people were excited. I can see him 
 now, writing his story, smoking an old cob pipe, 
 with a section of that dead arm propped up on 
 his desk before him. Then, at the end, he ex- 
 plained it all and made the police ridiculous. 
 
 Once a circus came to town on Sunday to show 
 on Monday. On Monday morning we had a 
 sensational story about the escape of a blood- 
 sweating behemoth of Holy Writ, telling how 
 this ferocious animal had broken out of his 
 cage and ravaged the countryside. Most of 
 the town went down to see and hunt the escaped 
 beast and the story made such a hit with the 
 circus proprietor that he took our star man 
 and made a press agent of him. Another Sun- 
 
44 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 day night the striking apparatus of a big clock 
 in a church steeple became disarranged and the 
 bell on which the honrs were struck boomed out 
 at irregular intervals all night. This was 
 enough for our star man. He sat down and 
 wrote a thrilling story about an escaped maniac 
 who had climbed up in that steeple and was 
 pounding on the bell ; and when the paper came 
 out next morning half the police in the city 
 marched down there to capture the madman. 
 
 I went to work in the spring, and early in 
 the fall the shakeup my friend of the Sunday 
 paper had predicted came along. He came in 
 as city editor. His first eifort at getting in 
 touch with the staff was to assign each member 
 the task of reading the book on journalism he 
 had written. We all had to read it in order 
 to learn how to be reporters, though we con- 
 sidered ourselves about as good a bunch of re- 
 porters as the country boasted outside of New 
 York. I never have known why, but that man, 
 who helped me get my job, took a great ap- 
 parent dislike to me and made me the most mis- 
 
NEWSPxlPEE MAN 45 
 
 erable young man in the newspaper business. 
 He loaded impossible work on me and hazed me 
 fiendishly. 
 
 Finally he got me. One night at midnight, 
 after the cars had stopped running, when there 
 was three feet of soft snow on the ground and 
 the snow was still falling, he came out into the 
 local room and said: ''I am sorry, but I have 
 overlooked a very important meeting at Number 
 94 Yancey Street. It must be covered and you 
 will have to go and get it.'^ 
 
 Number 94 Yancey Street was four miles from 
 the office. I asked if I might have a cab and 
 he refused. I started out about midnight and 
 plowed through the snow for those four miles, 
 wet, cold, cursing him at every step. I didn't 
 get there until nearly three o'clock. I rapped 
 on the door of the house. A man stuck his head 
 out of the window. I asked him for the details 
 of the important meeting. 
 
 '^T\liat meeting!'' he asked. 
 
 **The meeting about the new railroad that 
 was held here to-night. ' ' 
 
46 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 **Why,'' said the man, '^we had no railroad 
 meeting here ! ' ^ 
 
 ^^ Wasn't there some kind of a meeting T' I 
 persisted. 
 
 '^Not that I know of,'^ he said, and shut the 
 window. As I turned away, burning with rage 
 and resolving to whip that city editor next day 
 if I went to jail for life, the man opened the 
 window and said: *'Hi, there, kid! I forgot. 
 We did have a small progressive euchre party 
 here to-night, but I don't think it was very 
 important. ' ' 
 
 I started back, so tired I could hardly walk. 
 Just then the snowplow came along and the 
 good chap who ran it saw my predicament 
 and let me ride up to Main Street with him 
 on it, which was, after all, better than walk- 
 ing. 
 
 Next day I went down prepared to club the 
 head of£ that city editor. I told my closest 
 friend, who had been having it rubbed into him 
 and was willing to help out, but who prudently 
 suggested we wait until after payday, as we 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 47 
 
 might need some money to go to some other 
 town. 
 
 That very night, ahont one o'clock, a fire 
 alarm came in from the Inmber-yard district. 
 The city editor rushed out and ordered the short- 
 watch man to go. Then he sent the long-watch 
 man and, at regular two-minute intervals, fired 
 out everybody else. I was about the fifth man 
 out; and I got as far as the first block up the 
 street, where I met a fire-lieutenant I knew, who 
 told me all about it. I came back, wrote the 
 story and turned it in. Meantime the city editor 
 had sent out my chum, who went up to the fire, 
 which was of no account, got the story and 
 walked back. He came in and sat down to write. 
 
 **What are you doing I" asked the city editor. 
 
 '* Writing this fire," he said. 
 
 ''Huh!" he sneered. ^'That fire story has 
 been in type half an hour. You didn't seem able 
 to cover it in any decent time and I got another 
 account of it. " 
 
 *^By !" shouted my chum. ''If this 
 
 is journalism working here under this man I'll 
 
48 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 quit now and go and pick gravel witii the chick- 
 ens/' 
 
 ^^So will I/' I said. 
 
 That night we sat up for hours deciding what 
 we would do. We determined to huy a daily 
 paper for ourselves. We knew where there was 
 a paper for sale in a small Western city. And 
 we hought it. I was not yet nineteen and he 
 was barely twenty-one ; but we bought it. Youth 
 is impetuous and we were young ! 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 49 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 I had been a reporter for eight or nine months, 
 had had my salary raised from ten to twelve dol- 
 lars a week and had already demonstrated two 
 things to my superiors when my partner and I 
 bought our daily newspaper. 
 
 The first was that I had a sort of talent 
 for making friends with and getting the confi- 
 dence of all sorts of people, from the highest 
 to the lowest; and the second was that I had 
 a sort of talent also for seeing the odd or un- 
 usual or humorous side of an occurrence and 
 could write what I saw — rather amateurishly, 
 but well enough to bring out the particular thing 
 that interested me. In other words, I was good 
 — for a youngster — on local color and human 
 interest. Furthermore, I had demonstrated that 
 I hated the routine, was likely to rebel under 
 discipline, had all the cocksureness of youth,, 
 
 4 — Newspaper Man, 
 
50 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 would work like a galley slave when a story in- 
 terested me; but would slide through with the 
 least possible exertion when the story was not 
 to my liking, and that generally I was a rather 
 opinionated and bumptious young person. 
 
 It is probable I was a good deal of a trial to 
 my city editors and to the managing editor, but 
 they didn't discharge me; and I was grateful 
 for that, though I felt at times I was not prop- 
 erly appreciated, as every other enthusiastic and 
 ambitious boy does. I was sure I could do the 
 theatres better than the regular theatre man and 
 felt slighted when a big story came along that 
 I did not have a hand in. I was big, healthy, 
 running over with animal spirits and certain I 
 had struck my vocation. There wasn't any 
 doubt in my mind that I could make a great 
 success of that daily newspaper, for I thought 
 I knew it all — and this after seven or eight 
 months at the business, mark you! I jumped 
 at the chance, for in our vealy office talks about 
 newspaper work we had long decided that the 
 only way to make money and reputation was 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 51 
 
 to own a paper — ^work for oneself instead of for 
 wages. There was nothing in reporting. That 
 was amply demonstrated by the fact that two 
 such colossal geniuses as my partner and my- 
 self were working for twelve dollars a week 
 apiece — fnlly as much as we were worth, by 
 the way — and one or two others on the staff, 
 not half so good, were getting the monumental 
 wages of fifteen and seventeen dollars. The 
 difference between twelve dollars a week and 
 fifteen, when either sum is the total income, is 
 greater than may appear to the casual reader. 
 That extra three dollars meant many things that 
 were unattainable when it did not come in on 
 payday. With a daily paper of our own in a 
 flourishing city, we figured we could easily earn 
 a hundred dollars a week, which meant fifty 
 dollars each; and fifty dollars was as much as 
 the managing editor received — a plutocrat who 
 belonged to clubs and rode in cabs, smoked two- 
 for-a-quarter cigars and had several suits of 
 clothes. 
 
 Tad — ^who was my partner — and I talked until 
 
52 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 daylight about the plan. He had had the idea 
 for some time, for an nncle, or a cousin, or a 
 relation of some kind of his, had a paper in a 
 small Western city that he wanted to sell so he 
 could resume the practice of law. Tad out- 
 lined the scheme to me. He was to get a few 
 days off, go out to the city, see the uncle, look 
 over the proposition and come back and report. 
 He was sure his relative would give him a rock- 
 bottom price and make easy terms. Also, he 
 was sure his relative would be fair and square, 
 and that this was the greatest journalistic open- 
 ing for two bright young men — ^without much 
 capital but with a capacity for work — in the 
 country. I thought so too. Neither of us knew 
 a single thing about any other opening in any 
 other city. Nor did we look for any. We felt 
 this was a providential offering for escape from 
 the bondage in which we were held, and we 
 scraped together enough money to buy Tad a 
 railroad ticket — out and back — and get him a 
 berth each way and his meals. It didn't take 
 a great deal of money, but we had a hard time 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 53* 
 
 gathering it. As I remember it, we borrowed 
 about all the available capital of our associates 
 and then had to coax the cashier to advance us 
 five dollars each on our salaries, which was a 
 good deal of a task and took some very fluent 
 and impressive reasons. 
 
 Tad left one Tuesday night and I stayed on 
 at work, walking round in a sort of a rose- 
 colored dream and seeing myself a great editor 
 in a great state. I was to be the editor and Tad 
 was to run the business end. Our capacities for 
 these various employments were about equal. 
 I had been a reporter in a small city for less 
 than a year, and he had graduated from college 
 with the idea of studying medicine. Neither one 
 of us knew a bill payable from a passport, and 
 our knowledge of the politics and other local 
 complications of the place we intended to make 
 our home was exceedingly vague. I was not 
 yet nineteen and he was a shade over twenty- 
 one — a powerful combination! 
 
 Tad said the reason he wanted me to go inta 
 partnership with him was because of my facility 
 
54 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 for making friends, which gave me a jolt. I 
 supposed this opportunity had sought me out 
 because of my highly developed editorial capac- 
 ity. However, I was so anxious to show what 
 I could do that I swallowed even that and waited 
 impatiently for his return, occupying my spare 
 time with plans for running the paper. I could 
 see many places where our own paper's methods 
 were deficient and privately I knew the city 
 editor was a dub — and I had my doubts about 
 the managing editor. Our editor was the man 
 I tied to. He could put out a *'You-lie-you-vil- 
 lain-you-lie!^' editorial, showing how any per- 
 son who questioned the policies of the Repub- 
 lican party, whether in Washington or the fifth 
 precinct of the Third Ward, or any of the lead- 
 ers, was a perjured assassin of character; and 
 I read his editorial articles avidly. 
 
 The days dragged along until the end of the 
 week. Then I had a telegram from Tad saying 
 he would be in that night. I was at the station 
 to meet him, burning with eagerness to hear his 
 Teport. I knew all the station people and had 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 55 
 
 no difficulty in getting into the trainshed. Tad 
 looked very important as lie came from his car. 
 
 ^^What Inckr' I asked. 
 
 '*Great!'' he said. 
 
 '^Can we get it?" 
 
 Could we get it? Oh! — the pathos of that 
 question ! 
 
 ^^Yep!'' 
 
 That settled it. I was to be a great editor. 
 I felt like throwing up my hat and spending 
 the last quarter I had for a telegram to my 
 mother. I didn't, though I borrowed a stamp 
 and wrote her, and used the quarter for sand- 
 wiches in the place where Tad and I retired to 
 talk it over. He was stone broke. Indeed, he 
 had lived on a nickel that day, getting a bag 
 of peanuts at a station down the road and eating 
 a few of those every time the dining-car waiter 
 came through with his various calls for meals 
 in the dining car. The trip had cost more than 
 we had planned. 
 
 *^It's a bully chance !''he told me as we went 
 at the sandwiches. **The city is a fine little 
 
56 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 place and the paper is all right. My relative 
 wants to go to another city to practice law, and 
 he is willing to make a low price to ns for the 
 paper. It is an evening paper. There is an- 
 other paper there that has been going for twenty 
 years, and a weekly paper ; but we can run them 
 out in a short time when we get in there with 
 our knowledge of the business. They are 
 awfully slow and old-fashioned. The paper is 
 four pages and hasn't been looked after. The 
 plant isn't so big as it might be, but we will 
 soon fix that. I like the town. It's a bully little 
 place, and the country round it is prosperous." 
 
 ^^Has the paper been making any money 1" I 
 asked incidentally, for we had talked for an 
 hour of the various editorial reforms we pro- 
 posed to institute. 
 
 '*I guess so," he answered vaguely; *'for it 
 has got a lot of advertising. It had almost two 
 pages the day I was there. I suppose," he 
 commented, '*that is where the money comes 
 from." v,^ 
 
 '*I suppose so," I answered, and then we 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 57 
 
 went back to our editorial policy. Neither of us 
 was interested in the advertising or circulation, 
 though that was to be Tad's end of it. We 
 talked a long time about the style of the firm — 
 a most important feature — and argued whether 
 his name or mine should come first. Finally 
 we settled it by pitching a penny. I won. My 
 name was to be first and his was to follow the 
 ^^and," which firm name was to be followed by 
 the words, ^^Sole Editors and Proprietors." 
 
 We stayed there until they shut the place. 
 As we were walking up the street it occurred 
 to me to ask how much the paper would cost. 
 That part of it had been given little consider- 
 ation. The main thing was to find out whether 
 the proprietor would condescend to sell to us. 
 
 '^What does he want for the outfit r' I asked 
 in an off-hand way. 
 
 *' Twenty-five hundred dollars." 
 
 Twenty-five hundred dollars! I stopped in 
 the street and looked blankly at Tad. Where 
 would we. get twenty-five hundred dollars 1 For 
 the first time it appealed to me that money must 
 
58 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 change hands in a transaction of this kind. I 
 hadn't thought of that part of it before. 
 
 '^Twenty-five hundred dollars!" I shouted. 
 ''Why not twenty-five million? Where can we 
 get twenty-five hundred dollars!" 
 
 "Oh," reassured Tad, "it isn't all in cash. 
 He will sell it to us for five hundred dollars 
 down and take a mortgage for the rest." 
 
 I breathed more easily — though five hundred 
 dollars was more money than I had ever seen 
 at one time in my life. 
 
 "Well," I said grandly, "we'll take it.'^ 
 
 "Sure!" Tad replied, and we parted to go 
 to our rooms. I walked down to the office and 
 went up to the local room. Two of the boys 
 were on the long watch and the rest had gone. 
 They were reading the last revises. How I 
 pitied them — slaves; mere cogs in a great 
 wheel ! While I — ^I was a Great Editor ! 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 59 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Next day we went into the financial end a lit- 
 tle. We thought if we got two hundred and fifty 
 dollars each to make up the &ve hundred, and 
 a hundred each for expenses and railroad fare 
 and money to have on hand until we could be- 
 gin to collect on the advertising, we could get 
 along. So we started out to raise the three hun- 
 dred and fifty dollars each. It was hard work. 
 At the end of two days we wired our benefactor 
 we thought two hundred and fifty dollars would 
 be enough — and two hundred and fifty dollars 
 more at the end of a month. He sent back a 
 **rush" telegram saying that would be all right. 
 This seemed very kind of him. We felt under 
 obligations. We never had a suspicion that his 
 haste might mean anything else but a desire 
 to help two bright young chaps make a start 
 for themselves. 
 
60 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 I decided to get three hundred dollars if I 
 could. I soon discovered that three hundred 
 dollars is a mighty sight easier to say and to 
 write than to get — an experience common to 
 everybody who has needed that much money. 
 My rich friends all had excuses. They couldn't 
 quite see the proposition in the bright light I 
 did. Finally I turned to a source that had never 
 failed me in times of dire necessity and the 
 money came, with a blessing. That three hun- 
 dred dollars was the greatest amount of money 
 I had ever had at one time. It seemed like a 
 fortune. It was a fortune, for with it I was to 
 grab the world and shake from it fame and 
 wealth and power. Tad got some money. I 
 forget how much — ^but some. Then we both 
 resigned, giving the customary week's notice, 
 and wrote to our benefactor that we would take 
 over the paper on a certain date — about a fort- 
 night ahead. 
 
 I left for the seat of my future operations 
 one raw night in March at ten o'clock. The 
 boys came down to see me off. That afternoon 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 61 
 
 one of the city papers had printed a story of 
 the venture. The first line of the head was: 
 ^^ Reporters Become Proprietors/' It was a 
 fine send-off. I have the clipping yet. The 
 editor and the managing editor had wished me 
 luck, but had expressed chilling doubts of the 
 success of the venture. The boys of the local 
 staff were frankly envious. They thought it was 
 great. 
 
 It was the first long railroad journey I had 
 ever taken and the first time I had ever been 
 in a sleeping car. I watched the other pas- 
 sengers to see how they went to bed and finally 
 turned in. I had the joint capital of the firm, 
 with the exception of enough to bring Tad out 
 a few days later, pinned in the inside pocket 
 of my vest. I wore my vest to bed — an unneces- 
 sary precaution, for I was so excited I didn't 
 sleep a wink, but tossed about all night and 
 looked out the windows as we stopped at the 
 stations. Those stops that night are literally 
 burned into my memory. I can call the stations 
 as they occurred until this day ; and every time 
 
62 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 I ride on that road, wkich I have done a hun- 
 dred times since, I look out at those places and 
 that night ride comes back vividly. I can tell 
 the railroad peculiarities of every station we 
 stopped at. Some have new station buildings 
 now, but some have not — and I know them all. 
 The train crawled. I was anxious to get at 
 the work of being the architect of my own for- 
 tune. When we got to the flat country it made 
 me a bit homesick. I was used to hills and val- 
 leys. It seemed so bare and depressing. It 
 was a twenty-four-hour journey and the train 
 was more than an hour late, so it was nearly 
 midnight when the porter told me it was time 
 for me to get off. "We pulled into a rather pre- 
 tentious station and the porter took my bag and 
 set it down outside. It was blowing a gale of 
 half sleet and half snow. A hack or two and a 
 couple of hotel busses stood near the station. 
 I took the bus for the hotel Tad had said was 
 near our office and rode up, peering out through 
 the steaming windows to try and see something 
 of the place. I noticed the street lamps were 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 63 
 
 dim and far apart and that there were few lights 
 in the houses. Finally the driver turned into a 
 paved street and rattled up in front of a big, 
 square, slate-colored place he said was the ho- 
 tel. I was cold and somewhat discouraged. My 
 entry to the scene of my future triumphs lacked 
 many of the features I had pictured to myself. 
 
 Five or six men and a dozen women were 
 sitting around a big stove in the middle of the 
 office. I registered and the clerk said he would 
 have a room for me as soon as the troupe that 
 had played there that night left. They were 
 going out on the one o 'clock train, he said. Part 
 of them were in the room then, gathered around 
 the stove. I pulled up a chair next to a little, 
 black-eyed, swarthy woman. 
 
 She looked at me curiously. 
 
 *^You leev here?" she asked. 
 
 ^^No," I replied; ^^but I expect to.^' 
 
 ^^God help you!'^ she said, patting my arm 
 in a motherly way. 
 
 ^^Whyr' I asked. ^^ What's the matter with 
 this placer' 
 
64 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 Then she told me she was the premiere 
 danseuse of the company that had played there 
 that night. They had a spectacular show, with 
 a small ballet in it. Business had been very 
 bad — not only there but elsewhere. The com- 
 pany was about to break up. She had walked 
 about the city. It did not impress her, and the 
 fact that the residents had refused to come out 
 and see one of the world ^s greatest dancers made 
 it certain to her that the place was of no con- 
 sequence. She asked me all about myself and 
 I told her. 
 
 ' ' Too bad ! ' ' she said. ^ ' Too bad^ — and such a 
 nice young man ! ' ' 
 
 "We talked some more. She had been having 
 an incredibly hard time — getting no salary and 
 dancing before unresponsive audiences. If she 
 could only get back to New York! Presently 
 the porter bawled out the train and the actors 
 and actresses bundled on their wraps and 
 crowded into the omnibus. The little premiere 
 patted me on the shoulder again. **Keep 
 enough to get home with,'' she whispered. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 65 
 
 ''Good-bye and good luck!" I didn't know 
 it then, but that was golden advice. She waved 
 her hand at me as she stepped into the omnibus. 
 The driver whipped up and the omnibus rattled 
 away. I have often wondered whether she got 
 back to New York — and how. I never heard 
 of her after that^ 
 
 S — Newspaper Man. 
 
66 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 CHAPTEE Vm 
 
 The morose niglit clerk showed me up to my 
 room. It was cold and cheerless. I crawled into 
 bed, but I didn't sleep any that night. I was 
 homesick. All my ideas of becoming a great 
 editor had vanished. I wished I was back on 
 the local staff. I could see the boys reading 
 proof and hear them roasting everybody on the 
 sheet. I could smell the scorched matrices from 
 the stereotyping room ; see the foreman cutting 
 the copy into short takes to hurry up the last 
 local and telegraph; could hear the city editor 
 fighting for space and see the foreman grimly 
 shoving galleys of type into the left-over rack. 
 I smelt the hot, inky odor from the pressroom 
 and could hear the whirring of the presses. I 
 was the most homesick young man in the United 
 States ! 
 
 Next morning, before I had breakfast, the 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 67 
 
 man who was selling the paper came around 
 to the hotel. He was a tall, cadaverous man, 
 with a sweeping black mustache and a furtive 
 eye. He was very cordial. He sat with me at 
 breakfast and told me how great the opportunity 
 was. The only thing that led him to sell was 
 his love for Tad, whom he wanted to see started 
 in life, and the fact that his profession — the 
 law — was calling for him. He was anxious to 
 close the deal and — did I have the two hundred 
 and fifty dollars with me? I cheered up a lot 
 under his talk and gave him the money, signing 
 some kind of a paper he had prepared. Appar- 
 ently it made no difference to him that I was 
 a minor and that my signature was of no con- 
 sequence legally, and I never thought of that 
 phase of the transaction. What he wanted was 
 the two-fifty. 
 
 He told me how to get to the office, and ex- 
 cused himself. Later, I learned that he took 
 the first train out of town, leaving me to intro- 
 duce myself to the employes as one of the new 
 **sole editors and proprietors." He said John, 
 
68 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 the city editor, would explain it all to me. I 
 was not suspicions. It seemed all right. So, 
 after paying over the money, I bade him good- 
 bye and went to the office. 
 
 The place wasn't half a block from the hotel. 
 The former owner said I couldn't miss it. I 
 did, though ; and I asked a man where the office 
 of the "Evening Eagle" was. 
 
 "Eight there," he said, pointing to a one- 
 story wooden building that sat with a gable end 
 to the street and was unpainted, dilapidated 
 and not much larger than our woodshed at home. 
 I stood and stared at it. I had expected to find 
 the paper housed in a brick building of some 
 kind, at least. Still, I remembered Tad had said 
 the plant wasn't much and that one of the first 
 things to do, after the money began to come 
 in under our powerful editorial and business 
 stimulus, was to buy some new presses and type 
 and fix up a business office. I went into 
 the building. It was divided into three 
 parts by partitions. In one room there were 
 an old, flat-topped desk and a tall desk 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 69 
 
 such as bookkeepers use. In the other room 
 there were another desk and a big pile of adver- 
 tising electrotypes and a lot of similar junk in 
 heaps on the floor. The composing room was 
 in the rear. It had three or four sets of type 
 cases, a proof press, some galley racks and some 
 other furniture. One man was setting type. 
 He was a small, unshaven man, who chewed 
 tobacco and wore a very dirty collar. 
 
 '^Hellol^'hesaid. 
 
 ' ^ Hello !'^ I replied. 
 
 ''"Want something r' 
 
 *^I am one of the new proprietors,^^ I in- 
 formed him with as much dignity as I could 
 coromand. In reality, instead of feeling digni- 
 fied, I felt like crying. It was all so different 
 from what I had pictured it. 
 
 He laughed — one of those laughs that make 
 you want to kill the man who laughs! 
 
 I itched to slaughter him — but I didn't. He 
 was the only person, apparently, from whom I 
 could get any information. 
 
 He looked at me pityingly. 
 
70 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 ''You don't say!" lie said. ''Well, I'm 
 damned glad to see you, for if we're going to 
 get this rag out to-day we've got to have some 
 copy pretty quick." 
 
 "Are you the only person who works here!" 
 I asked him. "Where is the city editor and 
 where are the reporters!" 
 
 He laughed again. "He'll be in pretty 
 quick," he replied. "He's gone down to the 
 depot to see if he can't get some of his back 
 wages from the old boss." 
 
 I walked out in the other room, sat down in 
 a rickety chair. and looked round. It was sick- 
 ening! Still, I was in for it; and I took some 
 paper, sharpened a pencil and wrote a long 
 editorial article which I headed "Salutatory!" 
 I told the printer to use triple leads, so it would 
 look more important and also take up more 
 space. In this editorial article I informed the 
 citizens of the city of the change of ownership ; 
 told of the great capabilities of the new owners ; 
 put them squarely on the platform of being for 
 a bigger, better and busier town; promised to 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 71 
 
 fight all municipal and political graft; to bring 
 about much-needed improvements; to hew to 
 the line and let the chips fall where they might ; 
 to support all worthy local enterprises; to be 
 unflinchingly independent in politics, choosing 
 for support none but the best candidates — and 
 a lot of similar flubdub. I remarked in capital 
 letters that we had come to stay, had invested 
 our capital here because we believed in the 
 glorious future of the town, and solicited sup- 
 port for our great enterprise from all citizens, 
 stating we would play no favorites but would 
 give the citizens a bright, newsy paper ; in fact, 
 I said we intended — and had the capital to carry 
 out the intention — to make this one of the lead- 
 ing papers of the state and a lasting credit to 
 the city. 
 
 As I was writing, a man came in. He was a 
 rather shabby man, with a heavy black mus- 
 tache, and carried an old, faded umbrella, which 
 he gripped tightly in his hand. 
 
 He stood uneasily and looked at me. 
 
 **What is it?" I asked, rather peremptorily. 
 
72 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 *^ Nothing,'' he said — ^^ nothing much. Only 
 I'm the editorial staff." 
 
 ^Mohn!" shouted the printer — *^John — dod- 
 gast you! — ^where's your local?'' 
 
 '^ Great Scott!'' I thought. '^That printer 
 seems to be boss round here. I'll soon change 
 that." 
 
 **A11 right, Chet," John replied. '^All right. 
 I'll get right at it. Only this man is using my 
 desk." 
 
 *^I'm the new editor," I said, again drawing 
 heavily on my reserve stock of dignity. 
 
 John looked at me the same way the printer 
 had. Then he faltered: 
 
 *^Am I discharged?" 
 
 Fancy a man asking me if he was discharged ! 
 Fancy my having the power to discharge any 
 one ! 
 
 ^^No, my man," I said patronizingly; **you 
 are not discharged. I shall keep you on until 
 I see what you can do. Of course, if you 
 prove your worth I shall be glad to retain 
 you. At present any arrangement I may 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 73 
 
 make with you is but temporary. I must try 
 you out/' 
 
 I have thought for many years since that mo- 
 ment that John should have batted me over the 
 head with his umbrella. I deserved it, for I soon 
 found John and that printer were the only real 
 friends I had in that state. John's salary, I may 
 say, was eight dollars a week under the old 
 regime. 
 
 **John,'' squeaked the printer, **did you get 
 any dough out of the old man!*' 
 
 John hurried into the composing room and 
 whispered to the printer. 
 
 '^All right,'' I heard the printer say; ^^we'll 
 tap him." 
 
 John came back to the desk where I was sit- 
 ting. 
 
 **If you don't mind," he said meekly, ^'I'll 
 write up what local I've got. We go to press 
 at four 'clock. ' ' 
 
 ^^Four o'clock!" I shouted. ^^Do you mean 
 to say you print only one edition in the after- 
 noon?" 
 
74 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 ^^WeVe always found one enough!'' And 
 John grinned a little. 
 
 ^^My dear sir," I said in my most important 
 manner, '^that will be changed. We intend to 
 give the people of this city an up-to-date after- 
 noon newspaper. We shall have a noon edition, 
 a home edition and a street edition, and issue 
 extras whenever the news is worth one." 
 
 ^^Well," said John, ^* that's all right; but you 
 can't start to-day." 
 
 ^'Whynotr' 
 
 *' There ain't enough paper on hand for the 
 edition, for one thing, and the telegraph won't 
 be here in time for a noon edition." 
 
 *' Telegraph won't be here in time!" I par- 
 roted blankly. ^'Why not? Isn't the telegraph 
 coming in all the time 1 ' ' 
 
 ' ^ It comes in by express at two o 'clock, ' ' said 
 John simply. 
 
 ^^By express !" I was dumfounded. We had 
 the full press report back in the old shop and 
 two specials — to say nothing of cords of stuff 
 from special correspondents. 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 75 
 
 *^Yes/' explained John. ^*Oiir telegraph is 
 six columns of plate matter sent in from Chi- 
 cago every morning by express. If the train is 
 late we have to hold the paper until it comes. 
 Once there was a wreck and we couldn't get it 
 out that day at all ! ' ^ 
 
 ^*Let me see yesterday's paper," I demanded. 
 
 John got one. It was a six-column sheet of 
 four pages. On the first page there were two 
 columns of plate matter; then, in the middle, 
 two columns of display advertising; and, to 
 finish up the page, two more columns of plate 
 telegraph matter. There was a column of wishy- 
 washy editorial matter on the second page and 
 two or three columns of plate matter, including 
 the two columns of telegraph left oif the first 
 page, and some display advertising. The third 
 page had two columns of local news, set in big 
 type, and advertising; and the last page was 
 mostly advertising of the type called ^'foreign" 
 — that is, it was patent-medicine advertising and 
 that sort of stuff, and not local advertising. 
 From a casual inspection, judging from the 
 
76 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 amount of advertising carried, the paper was 
 prosperous if any money at all was being taken 
 in for it. 
 
 ^'I don't like that," I said to John, pointing 
 to the two columns of advertising on the first 
 page. *^I shall put that stuff back in the inside 
 of the paper. ' ' 
 
 '^I wouldn't, if I were you,'^ John advised. 
 ^ ' That 's the only cash advertising we have and 
 we have to give them that position to get the 
 money.'' 
 
 *^The only cash advertising !' ' I exclaimed. 
 **"What, in Heaven's name, is the rest of this 
 stufei" 
 
 ^^I've got to get up my local," said John, and 
 sat down at the desk. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 77 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 I studied the paper. It was a poor thing. 
 The telegraph news was reasonably fresh, but 
 it humiliated me to think it was cast in plate, 
 shipped from Chicago by express instead of com- 
 ing in over our own wire. Still, I reflected, it 
 would cost a heap to get wire service and entail 
 the employment of a lot of printers to set the 
 stuff. So I resolved not to cut it off until Tad 
 came, at any rate, and we could talk over wire 
 arrangements and buy a suitable service from 
 the press association. The local news was un- 
 speakable. It was mostly personal items about 
 people who took the trains in the morning, a 
 little sloppy society, a rank story about a meet- 
 ing of the common council and some stuff about 
 a church fair. ^^We'll liven that up,'' I said 
 grimly. 
 
 John turned in his local. Meantime another 
 
78 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 frowsy printer had come in and taken a case. 
 I found out that the pressman was not due until 
 three o'clock, that we had an arrangement 
 whereby we bought our power from a near-by 
 factory and that our edition the afternoon be- 
 fore was four hundred copies, from which the 
 revenue was considerably less than two dollars. 
 Both Tad and I had forgotten to ask what the 
 circulation was. Still, that made no difference, 
 for we would make the paper so much better 
 than it had been the people would just have to 
 buy it. 
 
 It took some tall hustling to get even that 
 small grist of matter put into type. John's 
 copy made me writhe and I edited it as much 
 as I dared. Chet, the printer, told me if I cut 
 out much of it we wouldn't have anything to fill 
 with unless we shoved in some m.ore dead ads. 
 
 ''Dead ads?" I asked. ''What are dead 
 
 Chet took a copy of the paper of the previous 
 afternoon and swept his hand comprehensively 
 over the entire back page and most of the third 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 79 
 
 page, where there was so brave a showing of 
 patent-medicine advertising. 
 
 *^ Them's dead ads/' he said. 
 
 ' * What do you mean ? ' ' 
 
 He laughed again. 
 
 ^'1 mean themes ads that the contracts has 
 run out for, and we 've bin runnin ' them because 
 it was cheaper to use them than set type." 
 
 ^^Do you mean that no money is to be paid 
 for that advertising?" I gasped. 
 
 **Not a cent," he said. ^^ Gimme the copy 
 for the rest of that salutatory of yours." 
 
 That was a facer. I sat down and read proof 
 on the salutatory; but it was a bad job of 
 proofreading. I could see nothing but ^'dead 
 ads" in every line instead of the highfalutin 
 language I had so confidently written a short 
 time before. 
 
 ** Where's the telegraph?" I asked John about 
 two o'clock. 
 
 **Down at the express office." 
 
 **Why don^t they deliver it?" 
 
 **Well, you see," said John, ** we've been 
 
80 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 kind of slow payin' for that stuff and they've 
 gone to sending it C. 0. D.'' 
 
 ^^How much is itf" 
 
 John told me and I gave him the money. 
 Presently an expressman came in witfi a long, 
 narrow box with a sliding cover. In it were 
 six plates, each a column wide, of assorted tele- 
 graph news. Chet, who, I discovered was fore- 
 man as well as devil, took the six plates, handed 
 me the proof sheet of the plates that were in the 
 box and asked me how I wanted it. There were 
 three columns with display heads at the top and 
 three columns with two-line heads. Thus a big 
 head could be placed in the first, third and fifth 
 or sixth columns, and the other columns sand- 
 wiched in between. This slovenly make-up 
 jarred me, but there was nothing else to do. 
 ^^ Anyhow," I thought, *^they will all read the 
 salutatory. ' ' And if I continued the two-column 
 advertisement in the middle of the page I could 
 have a head on the first column and one on the 
 sixth, and that would make a fairly presentable 
 page. I considered that for quite a time. Then 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 81 
 
 I told Chet to put the first-page advertising on 
 the inside. 
 
 ^^ You 11 lose it/' Chet said. 
 
 *'A11 right," I replied; ^^then we'll get some 
 more." 
 
 Chet laughed again. 
 
 After much trouble we got the paper to press. 
 Half a dozen small boys came around about 
 four o 'clock and bought a few copies. I took in 
 seventeen cents, which meant I sold thirty-four 
 copies to the boys. That constituted our street 
 sale that day, for nobody evinced enough inter- 
 est in our enterprise to come in and get a 
 paper — nor did any of the boys come back for 
 more. 
 
 The mail came in with a liberal number of 
 exchanges and a lively letter from Tad. I 
 clipped a little miscellany, wrote two or three 
 editorials on broad, general topics and gave 
 them to Chet^ — and sat down to figure out what 
 had happened. 
 
 I couldn't. I felt we had been swindled, but 
 I didn't know enough about it yet to point out 
 
 6 — Newspaper Man. 
 
S2 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 where. As I was sitting there Chet and John 
 came in. 
 
 **Boss," said Chet, **can we have a little 
 money 1 ' ' 
 
 ''How mnchf'' I asked. 
 
 ''A couple of dollars to get something for the 
 Jiouse.'^ 
 
 I gave each of them two dollars and they left. 
 I found a key in the door and locked it. Then 
 I walked down to the telegraph office and wired 
 io Tad : ' ' Hurry up and get out here. We have 
 been buncoed !'' 
 
 That night I received a telegram from Tad: 
 ^'I shall be there day after to-morrow. Cheer 
 up ! It 's all right. ' ' 
 
 I was so tired that night that even my fears 
 could not keep me awake ; and when I rose next 
 morning and had my breakfast I was in better 
 spirits. ''I won't quit/' I said. ''I'll fight this 
 out somehow." 
 
 I went over to the office early and gave John 
 some assignments that opened his eyes. One 
 was to go to the hotels and get a list of hotel 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 83 
 
 arrivals. John turned in this list and I printed 
 it. Next day he came in with a list of notables 
 from all over. 
 
 * ' Get bnsy, John ! " I shouted. * * If these peo- 
 ple are all here get out and interview them. 
 Ask them how they like the town. Get some- 
 thing out of them and we'll have a few live lines 
 in the sheet, anyhow.'' 
 
 John hurried out, but came back in half an 
 hour looking very sheepish. ^'It was a joke," 
 he said — ^^they wrote them names on the regis- 
 ter to fool us!" 
 
 I had to get the telegraph out of the express 
 office that second afternoon just as I had on the 
 first. Moreover, the man who had the two- 
 column advertisement on the first page came in 
 and said unless he could have that position he 
 would take his advertisement out. **Give it to 
 him," advised Chet — and I did. We needed 
 the money; though when I inquired I found he 
 had that commanding position in that great 
 organ of public opinion for less than two dol- 
 lars a day ! 
 
84 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 I took in twenty-four cents from the street 
 boys that afternoon and had an order or two 
 from the carrier rontes. Also, I wrapped up 
 the mail myself and sent the papers over to the 
 post-office. Nobody had done that on my first 
 afternoon, but I received no protests. Appar- 
 ently nobody cared whether the ''Evening 
 Eagle" came out or not. Along about five 
 o'clock Chet came in and asked for a dollar. 
 
 ''Chet,'' I said, ''what sort of a game is this 
 I am up against, anyhow?'^ 
 
 "Well,'' said Chet, "I'll tell you. I've bin 
 workin' along here for a couple of months and 
 gettin' a dollar or so at a time, an' John's bin 
 doin' the same thing. This here paper was 
 pretty fair one time, but the feller that started 
 it sold out to the man who sold it to you an' 
 moved to another town. This here is a Eepub- 
 lican community and the other paper's bin here 
 for years, an' is a good, reliable paper, with a 
 telegraph report by wire, and sticks to the Re- 
 publican party. They was room enough here 
 for another paper; but the man that just had 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 85 
 
 it threw this here one away from bein' an inde- 
 pendent paper an' made it prohibition. Now, 
 that don't go in this here town. He was nasty, 
 too; and he put in a lot of mean stuff about 
 our citizens. 
 
 ^^Nacherally the * Eagle' lost circulation; an^ 
 he was a lawyer an' didn't know no thin' about 
 newspapers, anyhow. The sheriff's bin jist two 
 jumps behind us for two months. Then the 
 editor gets you fellers on the string and sells 
 to you. It was a shame. He rigged up a plant 
 on you. He showed that feller that came out 
 here fake contracts and run the paper full of 
 dead advertising and buncoed him right smart. 
 He was at the end of his string, an' he knew 
 it; an' he jumped the town with whatever 
 money you gave him. Everything here's mort- 
 gaged an' we owe everybody in town. The 
 paper ain't worth a damn — an' never has bin; 
 and you're plumb up against it!" 
 
 Then Chet took the paper and showed me in 
 detail just how we had been flim-flammed. As 
 nearly as I could make it out, the paper car- 
 
86 THE MAKING OP A 
 
 ried about twenty dollars' worth of live adver- 
 tising a day, with all the rest worthless; and 
 there were no contracts outstanding. We were 
 in debt to the paper house and could only get 
 paper by paying from day to day. Of course 
 I didn't purpose to pay off the old debts; but 
 I didn't Imow whether Tad had bought the insti- 
 tution, debts and all, or not. I soon found out. 
 He had. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 87 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Tad came in that night and I went down to 
 meet him. He got jauntily off the train, carry- 
 ing a guitar-case in his hand. 
 
 *^ What's thatr' I asked. 
 
 '^My guitar/' he answered. '*I thought we 
 might like a little music of an evening until we 
 get acquainted around town.'' 
 
 '^Fine idea," I said. ^' Great! Unstrap it 
 and play the Spanish Fandango now." 
 
 ^^What for?" he asked in amazement. 
 
 *^0h, nothing," I said; ^^but I sort of need 
 music at this juncture." 
 
 "What's biting you!" 
 
 "Nothing — nothing at all, except that we're 
 the two biggest suckers on the inhabited globe." 
 
 Tad dropped his guitar. 
 
 "What's the matter? Isn't everything all 
 right?" 
 
88 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 '*Tad, I said, ^'this is no place to break the 
 news to you. Let me lead you to the seclusion 
 of our boarding house. Have you got any 
 more money?" 
 
 Tad looked at me blankly. 
 
 ^*More money?" he asked. '*Do you think 
 I'm John D. Rockefeller? I gave you all the 
 money I could get. What's become of it? IVe 
 only a few dollars in my pocket." 
 
 **Come on!" I said. firmly. ^^Come on, be- 
 fore I kill you on the spot! What do we want 
 with more money? Why, dad blame you, we 
 want all the money in the world to pull this 
 thing your benignant relative sold to us out 
 of the hole." 
 
 Tad said nothing. As we walked up the street 
 I suggested: 
 
 *^Play a little something on your guitar, Tad. 
 A little music will be fine while we are getting 
 acquainted. ' ' 
 
 **Shut up," he retorted savagely, ''or I'll 
 break it over your head!" 
 
 ' ' That 's right, ' ' 1 replied. * ' My head is thick 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 89 
 
 enough to break anything on, or I wouldn't be 
 here.'' 
 
 Thare was no more conversation until we 
 reached the room I had rented. I lighted a 
 cigar a man had given me who wanted a two- 
 column puff of his candidacy for assessor 
 printed for nothing, and Tad sat on the bed 
 and glowered. 
 
 ^^What is it!" he finally said. ^^Get it out 
 of your system. What's wrong f 
 
 ^'What's wrong?" I shouted. ^^Hear him 
 babble! AYhat's wrong? Why, you fair-haired 
 galoot, everything is wrong. Here, we've quit 
 our jobs and come away out here and given a 
 relative of yours — a dear, kind, honest relative 
 of yours — who wanted to see you get a start in 
 the world, two hundred and fifty dollars of good 
 money and tied ourselves up for more than two 
 thousand more, for a rag of a sheet that isn't 
 worth two hundred and fifty cents." 
 
 '^You must be mistaken," insisted Tad. 
 
 ** Mistaken!" I roared — ^^when the total cash 
 receipts of the place for the first four days are 
 
90 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 less than a dollar; when the total advertising 
 isn't worth twenty dollars a day and most of 
 that weVe got to take out in trade; when not 
 a line of new advertising can be secured in the 
 place, for they wouldn't advertise with us if we 
 gave it to them; when the paper has been on 
 the wrong side of everything for the last three 
 years ; when we 've got only four hundred circu- 
 lation, and two hundred of that compli- 
 mentary!" I stopped and laughed. 
 
 **What are you laughing at?" asked Tad. 
 
 ^*I was laughing to think of anybody being 
 complimented by getting that sheet!" 
 
 ^*But," said Tad, ignoring the remark, **it 
 carried a lot of advertising when I saw it; and 
 he told me it was making good money. ' ' 
 
 ''Surely it carried a lot of advertising when 
 you saw it, but it was dead advertising. Do 
 you get that! Dead advertising! It was adver- 
 tising that had been paid for and had run out, 
 and he was carrying it for nothing, because that 
 was cheaper than setting up stuff to fill the 
 space. It isn't worth a nickel a year to us! 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 91 
 
 And all those contracts lie showed you had ex- 
 pired. And the plant isn't worth forty dollars 
 — and we don't own it anyhow, for it's mort- 
 gaged. And we have to buy paper day by 
 day and take the telegraph boiler-plate out of 
 hock each afternoon before we can get the paper 
 on the rickety old press. And our total cash 
 capital is less than seventy-five dollars — and 
 we can 't raise another cent in this world I And 
 our force consists of two bum printers and an 
 editorial statf that doesn't know its name. And 
 they will shut off our power unless we pay up 
 before the end of the week. And the rent on 
 the shack where we are is due and we are likely 
 to be evicted unless we can stave that otf. 
 
 And But what's the use! Play something 
 
 on your guitar, Tad. We need a little music, 
 don't you think I" 
 
 ^'What shall I play?" asked Tad, who sat 
 blinking at me. 
 
 ''Oh," I said, ''play the Dead March in Saul! 
 That'll about hit things off, I reckon." 
 
 What is a roaring comedy now was a fearful 
 
92 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 tragedy then. We sat in our room and looked 
 at one anoUaer. There was nothing to say. If 
 we had had as much business sense as a pair 
 of three-year-old twins we never should have 
 been in that ^; but neither of us had a grain 
 of that useful — not to say essential — ^under- 
 standing. We were a pair of enthusiastic young 
 theorists; and at that moment not only our 
 doll but every doll in the world was stuffed with 
 sawdust 
 
 We discussed the situation. Every plan we 
 laid ran hard against the same stone wall. It 
 all resolved itself to the question of money. If 
 we had money we could scrabble along for a 
 time. Without money we were helpless; and 
 there wasn't a place in the world where I could 
 get another dollar. Tad was in the same case. 
 So we shook out our pockets. We had less than 
 a hundred dollars between us, and there were 
 bills to be paid and other expenses to be met — 
 to say nothing of wages for our small staif. 
 
 ^^ Let's go to bed/' said Tad. 
 
 There was no good reason for staying up, so 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 93 
 
 we went to bed ; and when we were dressing in 
 the morning Tad evolved a plan. It was this: 
 We were to go down to the office, look into the 
 situation thoroughly, get all the information we 
 could from Chet and John; then follow the 
 man who sold ns the paper to the city he was 
 to practice law in and ask him to take the paper 
 back — and give us at least enough of our money 
 for railroad fares to the East. That cheered 
 us. We thought if we put the case fairly and 
 squarely up to the former proprietor he surely 
 would be willing to be fair and square himself. 
 That, I may say, was the final e^H^dence of the 
 fact that neither of us was fit to be at large 
 in the world without a guardian. 
 
 We fixed up the paper for the day, writing 
 some perfunctory editorial articles and handing 
 John's local news to Chet without even reading 
 it. Then we called Chet and John in and asked 
 them how about it. John hadn't said much up 
 to that time, but he unbosomed himself then. 
 He told how he hadn't been getting his eight 
 dollars a week regularly; how the paper had 
 
94 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 been milked until the last dollar had been ex- 
 tracted; how local advertising contracts or 
 agreements had been made for long terms at 
 extremely low rates even for so poor a medium, 
 in consideration of payment in advance, and 
 how we were stuck with those agreements and 
 there could be no money coming in for weeks; 
 how dead advertising had been carried along; 
 and how the paper man and the plate man and 
 the power man and the ink man, and all the rest, 
 had been paid from day to day or staved off 
 if possible. In short, he showed us that we had 
 bought an entirely worthless property and that 
 if we had no money we might as well quit. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 95 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 We both were confident we could pull out if 
 we had two or three thousand dollars ; but we 
 might just as well have needed two or three 
 millions. I didn't know how to get any money, 
 nor did my partner. We had trouble enough 
 scraping together the little first payment. So 
 there we were! We put all these facts in as 
 presentable shape as possible and I started for 
 the city where the man who sold us the paper 
 was living. The place was away up north and 
 there had been a heavy fall of snow. We de- 
 cided it would be wise to go as cheaply as pos- 
 sible — and I went in a day coach. The weather 
 was bitterly cold and so was the day coach. 
 Along about three o'clock in the morning they 
 hustled me out at a junction and told me the 
 train I wanted would be by at ^ve. I shivered 
 round there until the train came along about 
 
96 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 six, and at noon I got to my destination. It so 
 happened a merchant in that town was originally 
 from my home village and I went to see him 
 and asked him for the name of a good lawyer. 
 He told me where to go. 
 
 I laid my case before the lawyer. We had 
 heard of some sort of a legal proceeding called 
 a capias; and I thought that was what I wanted. 
 The lawyer listened gravely and after I had 
 finished and suggested a capias — ^not knowing 
 whether a capias was a body execution or a 
 death warrant — the lawyer said: 
 
 ^^Very well; I can apply for such a writ. Of 
 course you are prepared to furnish the neces- 
 sary bond?" 
 
 ''Bond!'' I gasped. ''What sort of a bond?" 
 
 "Why, in a proceeding of this sort it is neces- 
 sary to furnish a bond to indemnify the person 
 against whom the writ issues should the writ 
 not be well taken." 
 
 It may be I do not remember the legal term- 
 inology correctly, but I do remember he wanted 
 a bond; and I also remember vividly that I 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 97 
 
 couldn't have furnished a bond for ^ye cents. 
 That was a facer. 
 
 *^ Can't we do it without a bond!" I asked. 
 
 **No," he replied. 
 
 ^*Very well," I said; ^'I will go down to my 
 hotel and arrange for the bond and call on you 
 later in the day. I must wire my partner. ' ' 
 
 As I was going out he coughed inquiringly. 
 I turned. 
 
 *^My retainer," he suggested suavely. 
 
 * ' Oh, certainly, ' ' I said quite grandly. * * How 
 much will be sufficient ? ' ' 
 
 ^^Well, about twenty-five dollars will do in 
 the circumstances — though ordinarily I would 
 ask a hundred. I feel a deep sympathy for you 
 boys and think you have been shabbily treated ; 
 so I shall not charge you much." 
 
 Charge us much! He was then charging me 
 about all I had. I took five five-dollar bills from 
 my meager roll of money and handed them to 
 him and he gave me a receipt. I have that re- 
 ceipt yet. It was the only thing I brought home 
 with me. 
 
 7 — Newspaper Man. 
 
'98 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 I stumbled out to the street, dazed. It had 
 suddenly dawned on me that getting back our 
 money and giving back the paper were not 
 such simple problems as they had seemed to 
 Tad and myself. Indeed, I had a glimmer we 
 could do neither thing, which proved to be the 
 case. I went to the hotel and asked about the 
 trains. There was no way to get out until the 
 next morning. So I hunted up the former pro- 
 prietor. I found him in an office, surrounded 
 I)y lawbooks. He wasn't busy and he was sur- 
 prised to see me. I was overcome by my wrongs 
 and cried out: ^^Give us back our money, you 
 swindler ! That paper is no good and you sold 
 it to us on false pretenses! You're a cheat!" 
 
 He was a smooth and oily person, that lawyer. 
 He half started from his chair as if to attack 
 me. I hoped he would, for I knew I could whip 
 him. He didn't, though. Instead, he sat back, 
 smiled rather indulgently and said soothingly: 
 '*Calm yourself, my dear boy. You are ex- 
 cited. What is the matter f" 
 
 I was gulping like a child when I sat down, 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 99 
 
 wild with rage and seeing red. I lialf formed 
 a plan to throttle him and take the consequences. 
 Then a feeling of my ntter helplessness came 
 over me and I almost sobbed as I began my 
 recital. 
 
 He listened calmly. Then he began to talk. 
 He told me we had bought the paper with our 
 eyes open; that we were a couple of kids who 
 expected to find as much in a small city as we 
 had left behind us ; that running a daily paper 
 in a small town was a precarious business at 
 the best, and that we should have known it at 
 the start ; that he sold on a caveat-emptor plan ; 
 and that, being a lawyer, and familiar with the 
 laws of the state, he had protected himself; 
 that he would not give us our money back and 
 would hold us to our bargain; and that if we 
 did not fulfill our obligations he would proceed 
 against us legally; and that, finally, if we had 
 taken over a proposition like that, with only 
 enough money to pay the first installment, we 
 deserved to lose! And he wished me a very 
 good day and invited me to begin any legal pro- 
 
100 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 ceedings I saw fit at the earliest possible mo- 
 ment. 
 
 I can see him now as I saw him then — through 
 a mist — sitting at his desk, emphasizing his 
 points by tapping on the desk with a pencil and 
 smiling at my great distress. 
 
 I was bluffed out. I had nothing to say. I 
 have often wondered since whether I should 
 have jumped in and given him a licking or taken 
 one. My conclusion is that I showed a little 
 sense by keeping off, for I had but a few dollars 
 and I was in a strange town. I didn't jump in. 
 Instead I shouted incoherently and melodramat- 
 ically something about getting even with him 
 and stumbled out into the snow again. I sent 
 a wire to Tad telling him I could do nothing, 
 but to keep on getting the paper out until I got 
 back. I arrived at the office on the evening of 
 the next day, to find Tad sitting on the tall desk 
 in the corner thrumming melancholy chords on 
 his guitar. 
 
 I told my story. We counted our money. 
 There was less than twenty dollars between us. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 101 
 
 My trip had cost almost twenty and the twenty- 
 five to the lawyer had peeled ns down to almost 
 nothing. Tad had been obliged to pay some- 
 thing to the power man and to the rent man and 
 to the paper man. Also, Chet and John had 
 demanded a few dollars each, saying they would 
 quit unless they got it. The other printer and 
 the pressman hadn't been in. They didn't know 
 how bad things were. We sat gloomily in the 
 darkness. The ^ * Sole Editors and Proprietors ' ' 
 had been depressed into a couple of heartsick, 
 homesick, hopeless boys. 
 
 ^^ What '11 we do!" I asked finally. 
 
 **What is there to do?" countered Tad de- 
 jectedly. 
 
 *^ Nothing." 
 
 Tad played a few snatches of a serenade. 
 
 * * Chop it ! " I shouted savagely, ^ ^ or I '11 kick 
 that guitar into splinters." 
 
 '^Oh, very well," said Tad; ^^but I always 
 resort to music in times like these. It has a 
 soothing effect." 
 
 We both laughed. 
 
102 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 ' ^ Cheer up ! " I said. ' ' We '11 wiggle out some- 
 liow. ' ' 
 
 Then we talked it all over, canvassing every 
 possible place where money might be secured, 
 coming back each time to the disconcerting 
 realization that neither of us could beg, borrow 
 or steal a penny. 
 
 *^ Let's give the blamed thing to John," sug- 
 gested Tad. 
 
 **What have you got against John?" I asked. 
 
 There was more talk. Finally we went to 
 our room and went to bed. In the morning 
 we walked down to the office together. We had 
 little to say, but we were thinking the same 
 thing — that was how to quit. When we reached 
 the office, the dingy office, with its pathetic 
 equipment and its miserable prospects. Tad 
 iurned to me and said: 
 
 '^Let's quit." 
 
 ''All right," I replied — and that settled it. 
 Then the boy in me came to the surface. I 
 didn't know how we were going to quit, but I 
 did know I was soon to be relieved of this load — 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN lOa 
 
 and I was happy. Tad felt the same way. We 
 kicked the door open and strode into the room. 
 John was sitting at his desk, grinding out his 
 local. Tad and I did a dance around the room ; 
 and then, putting our arms on one another's 
 shoulders, we sang, with fine barber-shop chords 
 and close harmony effects : 
 
 Round her neck she wore a purple ribbon — 
 
 She wore it in the summertime and in the month of May.. 
 And when they asked her why she wore the ribbon 
 She said 'twas for her lover, far away! 
 Far away — far away! 
 Far away — far away! 
 She wore it for her lover, far away! 
 
 Then we came in strong with the trombone 
 effect, * * Om-te-da-de ! ' ' and wound up with a 
 breakdown : 
 
 For round her neck she wore a purple ribbon — 
 And she wore it for her lover, far away! 
 
104: THE MAKING OF A 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 John jumped up and grabbed his umbrella 
 and Chet came in with a column rule in his hand. 
 They thought we had gone crazy. And so we 
 had. We were both so delighted to get rid of 
 the load that we danced and sang for ten or 
 fifteen minutes. 
 
 '* What's the matter!" cried Chet. 
 
 *^The matter, Mr. Chester White, of Poland, 
 China," yelled Tad, grabbing Chet by the shoul- 
 ders and waltzing him round the room — ^^the 
 matter is that this great palladium of the liber- 
 ties and organ of the best thought of the com- 
 munity is about to give up the ghost — quit, sus- 
 pend, go out of business, die the death of a dog, 
 and otherwise have its bright light extinguished. 
 That 's what 's the matter ! ' ' And we pulled the 
 astonished John and the amazed Chet into a 
 circle with us and sang with exquisite tremolo 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 105 
 
 and chromatic variations: ^* Farewell! farewell, 
 my own true love!^' 
 
 ** Gimme some paper!'' shouted Tad. 
 ' ' Gimme some paper, until I indite a few words 
 of burning good-bye to this community ! ' ' And 
 he wrote an editorial which he headed, ^^Vale- 
 dictory," and which closed with this statement: 
 '*If the people of this community remember us 
 as long as we shall remember them they will 
 erect a monument to our memory.'' 
 
 *'What becomes of us?" quavered John. 
 
 *^John," I said, ^^that isn't the important 
 question. The important question is. What be- 
 comes of us! You have a palatial home here, 
 John, supported in regal style on your munifi- 
 cent salary of eight dollars a week. Before we 
 go, John, we shall pay you all we owe you — and 
 probably more — money being no object to us 
 at the present time. Be calm, John; be per- 
 fectly calm. Undoubtedly your old boss will be 
 back and he will continue as the editorial staff 
 of this tribune of the people." 
 
 Chet took the editorial copy. '^I was goin' 
 
 b 
 
106 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 to jump the burg, anyhow !'* he said. We told 
 him to quadruple-lead the valedictory. Then 
 we discussed ways and means. 
 
 John suggested there might be a chance of 
 collecting a few dollars on some of the adver- 
 tising we had been running. He thought there 
 were a couple of accounts he could get some- 
 thing for. We gave John our blessing and 
 started him out. Then we decided to withhold 
 the paper until late in the evening, so we could 
 get all ready to leave by the night train. That 
 gave us pause. Leave by the night train ! How 
 in thunder were we going to leave by a night 
 train ! It took money to ride on trains and we 
 wouldn't have any after we had squared our 
 bills and paid our help. 
 
 While we were considering this the door 
 opened and a young man came in. ** How's 
 business?" he asked. 
 
 '^Eotten!" we both shouted. 
 
 ^ ' Same here, ' ' he said. Then he told us he had 
 come down from Chicago a time before and 
 opened a broker ^s office for the sale of stocks 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 107 
 
 and grain. He hadn't made a trade. He was 
 broke and lie was going back. That, however, 
 wasn't the object of the meeting. He was a 
 telegraph operator, of course, and as he had 
 no business to do he listened to the gossip on 
 the wire. He had taken off a dispatch that had 
 gone through telling of the death of Henry 
 Ward Beecher. He thought we might like to 
 have it, inasmuch as he gathered we had no wire 
 service. I grabbed it, put a scarehead on it and 
 put it on the first page of the paper that night — 
 double leaded. That was the only piece of real 
 telegraph news the *^ Evening Eagle" had dur- 
 ing the time the ^^Sole Editors and Proprietors" 
 were editing and proprietoring. 
 
 John came back presently. He had scraped 
 up seventeen dollars. We put this with our 
 pile and paid off. We had to pay the plate man 
 when he came round, but we decided to use 
 only the paper we had on hand, which would 
 print about two hundred copies of the paper. I 
 took a few to make my file complete and so did 
 Tad ; and when the newsboys came we told them 
 
108 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 to come back at six o'clock, tliat we had liad an 
 accident to our press. When we did let the 
 paper loose we gave the entire edition to the 
 boys and told them to go out and sell what they 
 could and keep the change. 
 
 Tad had been rummaging in the desks. Sud- 
 denly he let out a whoop. ^^Hi!" he shouted. 
 ** Here's luck ! Here are parts of mileage books 
 our friend left behind." 
 
 We examined the books with great interest. 
 We figured them out by the aid of timetables. 
 With one we could go as far as Sioux City, Iowa, 
 and with the other as far as Detroit. 
 
 *^ Which way do you want to go?" I asked 
 Tad. 
 
 "I don't mind," he answered. 
 
 Neither did I. Sioux City looked exactly as 
 good to me as Detroit, which wasn't very good 
 at that. We discussed this proposition for a 
 time. Tad didn't want to make a decision, nor 
 did I. Eeally, it was immaterial — except that 
 Tad said he knew a man in Sioux City whom he 
 might borrow a few dollars from until he got 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 109 
 
 on his feet. They liad been scliool friends and 
 Tad thought he was in the coal business. That 
 being the case, I insisted Tad should take the 
 Sioux City book, for I knew nobody there, nor 
 in Detroit; and I might just as well land in 
 one place as the other, inasmuch as I should be 
 without money, practically. Tad wouldn't have 
 it that way. 
 
 ** Let's jeff for it," he suggested. 
 
 '* All right." 
 
 Jeffing is a game played with type, a printer's 
 method of gambling when nothing else is handy. 
 We went out and got the type and jeffed, best 
 two out of three. Tad won. He took the Sioux 
 City book and that left me the Detroit one. So 
 that was settled. 
 
 As the afternoon wore on we paid our bills 
 round town, paid the landlady and the boarding- 
 house keeper and packed our trunks. I sent 
 mine back to the city from which we came, by 
 express, and Tad checked his to Sioux City. 
 When everybody was paid we had but a few 
 dollars left. These we divided equally. 
 
110 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 Then we gave the word to the pressman and 
 the last edition of the ' ^ Evening Eagle, ' ' under 
 the sole proprietorship and editorial manage- 
 ment of two boys who at the moment had about 
 twelve dollars in capital, was issued. "We read 
 Tad's valedictory with much interest. We 
 thought it looked pretty good. It was in the 
 seventh issue under our management. 
 
 When we had given the boys their papers we 
 shook hands with John and Chet, locked the 
 door and solemnly threw the key into a gully 
 that ran near the office. We walked down the 
 street and did not turn to look back at the scene 
 of our failure. I have never known what be- 
 came of the ^^ Evening Eagle." I don't know 
 whether the man who sold it came back and 
 took it, whether the sheriff got it, or whether 
 the plant rusted out where it was. I don't 
 know whether the paper was continued, or by 
 whom if it was. I don't know what happened 
 and I have never cared to hear about it. 
 
 The only communication I ever had from that 
 place since then came a few weeks later. It 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 111 
 
 was from John, and he accused me of taking his 
 old, faded umbrella away with me. Six months 
 later I heard from Tad. He had a job running 
 a coal and wood office on the outskirts of Sioux 
 City. Later he studied medicine and now is a 
 big doctor in an Eastern city. 
 
 The trains left almost at the same time that 
 night. We stayed round the hotel until time 
 to go. Then we spent half a dollar each to 
 ride up to the station in a hotel hack. There 
 was another passenger. He was a jewelry sales- 
 man who, as he said, *^was beating it out of 
 this burg.'' He had done no business. We 
 didn't know what our friend who sold us the 
 paper might try to do, so we said nothing about 
 ourselves. We knew we should be out of the 
 state in the morning and safe from him, at any 
 rate. I never did go back in that state for seven 
 years. On the way up to the train the jewelry 
 salesman told us that some big railroad shops 
 had recently been moved from the city, giving 
 the place a bad crimp. That was another indus- 
 trial fact we had neglected to inform ourselves 
 
112 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 about before we made our plunge. Still, our 
 misfortunes were not the fault of the people. 
 They were kind and hospitable and encourag- 
 ing. Tbey treated us well. The trouble was 
 that we were two visionary young fools, who 
 started on a ten-thousand-dollar adventure with 
 about four hundred dollars in real money. We 
 deserved all we got. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 113^ 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 I bade Tad good-bye when my train came in 
 and climbed aboard. We had figured the mile- 
 age correctly. It lasted to Detroit. Then the 
 conductor firmly told me he would have to have 
 money or another ticket. Inasmuch as I had 
 no ticket and little money, I got off to think 
 the problem over. It was a cold morning, colder 
 than any other morning I have ever known, I 
 think, looking back at it; and the people of 
 Detroit didn't seem interested in my affairs at 
 all. I went uptown and made the rounds of 
 the newspaper offices, thinking to get a job. 
 There were no jobs. At least, there was no 
 job for me, as various city editors told me 
 variously. 
 
 I had a big Irish frieze ulster I had bought 
 early in the winter. It saved my life, for I 
 economized on food. As I wandered round De- 
 
 8 — Newspaper Man. 
 
114 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 troit I came on a ticket-scalper's office. I 
 counted my money again. This wasn't neces- 
 sary, for I knew how much I had. It was less 
 than five dollars. I decided to go to Buffalo, 
 for I had a friend there who would give me 
 enough for a ticket home. I was sure of that. 
 My shoes were good and I spent half a dollar 
 for a pair of arctic overshoes at a second-hand 
 store. I figured I would ride two dollars ' worth 
 and walk the rest of the way. I took some stuff 
 out of my grip and checked the grip in the rail- 
 road station, thinking to send for it when I 
 was in funds. That didn't cost anything. The 
 man said I should pay when I got it out. I 
 never got it out. It may be there yet for all 
 I know. I stowed my stuff away in my pockets 
 and then went back to the scalper's office. He 
 had a ticket over the Grand Trunk, good as far 
 as London, Ontario. He wanted two dollars 
 and a half for it. I inquired and found the 
 regular fare was about three dollars and a half, 
 as I remembered it. It may have been more or 
 less than that. Anyhow, it was more than I 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 115 
 
 wanted to pay, and I went back to the scalper 
 and offered him two dollars for his ticket to 
 London. He sold it to me. 
 
 The train left abont half past ten, but I sat 
 in the station for several hours before that time. 
 It was warm there. When the train pulled out 
 I had a comfortable seat in the smoking car, 
 though I had nothing to smoke. Money was 
 too precious to be wasted on such luxuries. The 
 conductor looked at my ticket for a long time. 
 My heart was sick with fear that he would re- 
 ject it and put me off the train. Finally he 
 punched it and passed on. One of the dreams 
 that comes back to frighten me even now is a 
 vision of that conductor — ^big, bearded, red- 
 faced, standing with a lantern under his arm 
 turning that ticket over and over and looking 
 quizzically at me. Suppose he had rejected it ! 
 The thought scares me stiff yet. 
 
 The train ran a little late and it was five 
 o ^clock in the morning when the brakeman sang 
 out: ^'London! All out for London ! Ten min- 
 utes for refreshments. ' ' That meant me, though 
 
116' THE MAKING OF A 
 
 I had no idea of getting any refreshments at 
 that particular time. I had slept a little and 
 was feeling pretty fit. I climbed down and fol- 
 lowed the crowd into the station. At one end 
 of the big waiting room there was a lunch 
 counter. Most of the passengers made dives for 
 that and ordered coffee and doughnuts or pie. 
 I went over to take a look. 
 
 One sleepy man was in charge. He was busy 
 attending to the wants of the passengers. I 
 noticed that the sandwiches and doughnuts and 
 apples and cakes were piled on plates near the 
 edge of the counter and that at regular intervals 
 there were little round apple pies — nice-looking 
 little round apple pies — all brown on top and, 
 where the juice had seeped through the edges, 
 that beloved shiny black that I knew would taste 
 so well. I fingered my few coins. Those apple 
 pies tempted me. And I fell. 
 
 I edged in here and there among the passen- 
 gers and turned sideways to the counter. Then, 
 at an opportune moment, I slipped off an apple 
 pie into the big side pocket of my ulster. I 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 117 
 
 waited a minute. Nobody had seen me — and 
 I edged in again. Before the conductor called, 
 ^ * All aboard ! '' I had five pies in my ulster pock- 
 ets — five nice little brown apple pies — and a 
 couple of doughnuts. Of course I stole the pies. 
 That crime hung heavy over me for years ; but 
 once, a long time later, when I was up that way 
 on a story I went into that station and handed 
 the astonished lunch-counter man half a dollar. 
 I told him it was conscience money. He thought 
 I was crazy and said so, but he didn't give back 
 the half dollar! I imagine the company didn^t 
 get it either. 
 
 I stood on the platform and watched the pas- 
 sengers get aboard. The train pulled out. I 
 watched it as far as I could see the rear lights. 
 I reckon I was the loneliest boy in the world 
 at that moment ! There I was in London, On- 
 tario, with about two dollars in my pocket and 
 a hundred and fifty miles from the nearest place 
 where I could get any more ! I was too proud 
 to telegraph home and I resolved to walk in. 
 Walk in ! It was in March, cold and snowy. I. 
 
118 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 knew all that ; but I was young and strong, and 
 thought I could manage somehow. My ulster 
 would protect me, and I figured I could make 
 fifteen miles a day and get there inside of two 
 weeks. Besides, I had five apple pies for sus- 
 tenance and, if worst came to worst, could spend 
 .a dime or so for food or lodging. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 119^ 
 
 CHAPTER Xr^ 
 
 I turned back into the station. Tlie night man 
 looked at me suspiciously. I felt again just as 
 I had felt when the conductor scrutinized my 
 ticket. Heavens ! I thought — if he should know 
 about those apple pies ! He didn't, though. He 
 asked me what I wanted. 
 
 **I want to stay here in the station until morn- 
 ing/' I explained hurriedly. **The family I 
 am going to visit expected me last night, but I 
 was delayed and I don't want to go up to the 
 house until morning. Please let me sit here. 
 I won't bother anybody." 
 
 He was on the point of turning me out, but I 
 pleaded with him so earnestly he finally said : 
 
 '^All right, kid. Make yourself comfortable.. 
 It's against the rules, but I'll chance it. Only 
 you'll have to get out early in the morning, be- 
 fore the day man comes on." 
 
120 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 The day man came on at seven o'clock, wlien 
 it was still dark— and still cold, I may say. He 
 made no move to shove me ont and I stayed 
 on, finally persuading myself I had a right to 
 be there, inasmuch as I was waiting for a morn- 
 ing train. Presently the train came in. I didn't 
 go on with it, of course; then I bought a cup 
 of cofpee and started down the track. On the 
 way I ate my first apple pie. Coffee and then 
 apple pie may not be the idea of a food faddist 
 for breakfast, but it hit me as being a most ex- 
 cellent combination. Also, as I walked down 
 the track through London, I arrived at the wise 
 conclusion that I must conserve my food re- 
 sources or go hungry later in the coming days. 
 Ingersoll is nineteen miles from London and 
 I thought I might be able to get there that day. 
 1 started in good form and by noon had reached 
 a place called Waubuno. Then I ate another 
 apple pie. It didn't taste so good as the one 
 I had for breakfast, so I put in one of my dough- 
 nuts also. That helped a lot, and I started off 
 for Ingersoll like a professional pedestrian. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 121 
 
 My greatest trouble was witli my ulster. It was 
 very heavy. If I took it off and carried it I 
 became too cold, notwithstanding the exertion 
 of walking; and if I kept it on I was too hot. 
 I compromised by taking my arms out of my 
 sleeves and letting it swing on my shoulders. 
 Before I reached Waubuno I thought that ulster 
 weighed a hundred pounds; but three miles 
 the other side of Waubuno it began increasing 
 in weight until it weighed a ton. I wanted to 
 throw it away, but knew I should freeze if I 
 did. I lightened my load by discarding most 
 of the things I had kept out of my grip. 
 
 The last ^ve or six miles to Ingersoll were 
 slow and painful. My feet began to hurt. My 
 arctic overshoes, for which I had spent half a 
 dollar in Detroit, were holding out pretty well, 
 but they were uncomfortably warm at times. 
 Still, the track was fairly clear and the trains 
 not frequent ; I plugged along until, about seven 
 o'clock, I got into Ingersoll. I had been ten 
 hours making nineteen miles and was very tired 
 and very hungry — and I had no place to sleep 
 
122 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 in sight and no food save an apple pie. I 
 walked through the town. The most hospitable 
 place I saw was a livery stable, where a man 
 was cleaning some horses. I asked if I might 
 sit down by his fire for a time. He said I 
 could. When he had finished his horses he came 
 in and we talked for an hour. He was a middle- 
 aged man, smelling strongly of horses ; and he 
 told me he slept in a room boarded off from the 
 hayloft upstairs in the livery barn. 
 
 I was so tired and sleepy my eyes kept clos- 
 ing and my head dropping on my chest. 
 Finally, about nine o'clock, he punched me and 
 said: 
 
 *^Say, boy, I'm going to bed. Where are you 
 going to sleep r' 
 
 ^^I don't know," I answered. 
 
 ^^ Haven't you got any money!" 
 
 ''Not much," I told him, and then let him 
 have my whole story. 
 
 ''Come on up with me," he urged. "I ain't 
 got much of a place, but you're welcome." 
 
 He took me up to his room. It was a small 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 123 
 
 room, with two bunks in it built against the side 
 of the wall. I turned in in the upper bunk, 
 clothes on except my ulster and shoes, pulled 
 the blankets over me and was asleep in half a 
 minute. He poked me out next morning at six 
 o^clock. '^Come on down and help me do the 
 chores,'' he said, *^and I'll try to find you some 
 breakfast. ' ' 
 
 When I tried to put on my shoes I found that 
 walking nineteen miles through the snow over 
 a railroad track was not so easy a task as I had 
 thought it. My feet were swollen and painful, 
 and I had hard work jabbing them into my 
 shoes. I hobbled down and, after he had told 
 me how to hold a pitchfork, helped him with his 
 work. He went out about eight and came back 
 with a bucketful of coffee and some bread and 
 slices of cold meat. I ate ravenously, thinking 
 to conserve my pies, which I had examined that 
 morning and found to be in fair state of preser- 
 vation. 
 
 He told me Woodstock was the next town of 
 any size; and, by looking at my timetable, I 
 
124 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 found it was nine miles farther along. About 
 ten o^clock I started. The day was bright and 
 sunshiny and the snow had thawed a little; so 
 the walking was difficult. My feet hurt too. 
 The weight of the ulster was unbearable; so 
 I took it oif and made a sort of a pack of it 
 with the belt, and carried it suspended from my 
 left shoulder. Half a dozen times I was on the 
 point of throwing the ulster away, but I had 
 sense enough to keep it. That was about the 
 first time I had a glimmer of sense since I de- 
 cided to go into journalism for myself. That 
 ulster kept me from freezing half a dozen times. 
 I crawled along the track, passing one or two 
 little places where the men who were in sight 
 looked at me in a way that said to me plainly i 
 ^'There's a tramp that ought to be arrested.*' 
 Nobody molested me and I hobbled into Wood- 
 stock long after dark. It had taken me all day 
 to walk nine miles. At that rate I would get to 
 Buffalo along in April sometime. I thought. 
 Woodstock is a nice little town, but there are 
 not many people on the streets on cold March 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 125 
 
 nights. I walked up and down the main street^ — 
 I have forgotten its name, bnt I suppose it was 
 King Street, or High Street ; most of them are 
 — looking for a place where I could buy some 
 food for little money. I had eaten two of my 
 pies during the day. The idea of eating another 
 pie for supper made me ill. I had but one left 
 and was on the point of throwing that away, 
 but thought better of it and kept it. 
 
 I went into a hotel barroom and asked a man 
 I found there if there was a good, cheap res- 
 taurant in town. He directed me to a place 
 down the street and I got a beef stew for fif- 
 teen cents that was hot, filling and, without 
 any doubt, the best dish I have ever tasted in 
 my life. Then the sleep problem came. I 
 needed sleep more than I did food. I could 
 walk no more. Each foot felt as big as a pump- 
 kin and as hot as a basebumer stove. 
 
 The waitress in the restaurant told me there 
 was a hotel on one of the side streets where I 
 could get a good bed for fifty cents, provided 
 I had the fifty. I should have to pay in ad- 
 
126 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 vance, she said, for I didn't look very respect- 
 able or overburdened with money. I went down 
 to the hotel. It was a clean-looking place, bnt 
 the man in the office was the grimmest-looking 
 person I ever saw. My heart sank as I walked 
 np to the desk. 
 
 ^^Can I get a room heref I asked. 
 
 '^Yon can," he said with a broad Scotch burr 
 in his speech, ^^if you have the money/' 
 
 '^Howmuchis it?'' 
 
 ^^ Fifty cents." 
 
 I fingered my coins. Fifty cents would make 
 a big hole in my resources. 
 
 *^ Can't you put me in some back room — any 
 sort of a room — anywhere!" I asked desper- 
 ately — ^'and only charge me a quarter? You 
 see," I explained tremulously, ^^I haven't got 
 much money and I have just got to sleep. I'm 
 in a hard ^x ; and I '11 send the other quarter to 
 you as soon as I get to Buffalo. Pie as e^ 
 mister ! ' ' 
 
 He looked at me coldly. '*This is no place 
 for tramps!" he said. 
 
m WSPAPER MAN 127 
 
 **I'm no tramp!" I argued. *^ Indeed, I am 
 not. I'm in hard luck, but I'm not a tramp. 
 Come on, now, and be a good fellow. I'll do 
 any kind of work you want me to to make up 
 that other twenty-five cents. ' ' 
 
 ** Where will you be getting your breakfast!" 
 he asked, with some show of interest. 
 
 '*I don't know or care. Please let me have 
 abed. That's all I ask." 
 
 He looked at me steadily for a minute or 
 two. I must have been a woebegone spectacle. 
 Then he asked, rather irrelevantly, I thought: 
 
 ^What is your business?" 
 
 **I'm a newspaper reporter," and I blurted 
 out the whole story of my misfortunes. He had 
 heard of newspaper reporters and, on the whole, 
 considered them a bad lot. One had come down 
 from Hamilton once to look into the sale of some 
 land he was interested in and had not impressed 
 him favorably. Still, I might be different: and 
 I looked honest. I thought of the apple pie in 
 my ulster pocket and blushed with guilt. 
 
 ^ * Can ye write a letter ! " he asked. 
 
128 THE MAKING OF, A 
 
 Could I write a letter! I assured him I was 
 the correspondence king. I probably was the 
 best letterwriter in the world. Then he told 
 me he had a long and important letter to write 
 that was worrying him. It concerned a farm 
 he owned in the back country and if I would 
 promise to talk with him and get his ideas and 
 write the letter in the morning he would give 
 me a bed for twenty-five cents. 
 
 I know I cried a little from sheer joy when 
 he told me that. A bed, at that time, seemed 
 to me the acme of human desire! He led me 
 up on the third floor and showed me a good, 
 clean bed in a little room. I was asleep in five 
 minutes. But, Heavens ! how my feet hurt ! 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 129 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 He rapped me up before seven o'clock next 
 morning. '^Come down and have a bite of 
 breakfast before we begin/' be said. I hurried 
 through that toilet like a man who has but ^Ye 
 minutes to get off a sleeping car. They gave 
 me oatmeal, and bacon and eggs, and cotf ee, and 
 great slices of wonderful bread and new, sweet 
 butter. It was a feast! I ate until I was 
 ashamed. Then I went out to the office and we 
 took up the work of the letter. He told me 
 what he wanted to say and I made a draft of 
 it for him. That didn't suit him and I made 
 another. Finally I got it as he wanted it and 
 wrote it as plainly as I could for him to copy. 
 By this time it was noon and he gave me my 
 dinner and told me I had better stay until the 
 following morning. I rested all that day, had 
 a great sleep at night and another corking; 
 
 P — Newspaper Man. 
 
130 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 breakfast. When I tried to pay liim fifty cents 
 for the two nights' lodging he wouldn't take it. 
 He said my letter had earned it; and he told 
 me how to make a crosscut that would save 
 me some walking and get me into Paris that 
 night, nineteen miles by the railroad track. 
 Some years later, when I had money, I bought 
 and sent to that man the finest brier pipe I 
 could find in New York, reminding him of the 
 circumstances; and his scrawled letter of 
 acknowledgment is one of my treasures. 
 
 As I started to Paris I took stock. I had 
 accomplished twenty-eight miles and had spent 
 twenty cents of my money. It was a cold, crisp 
 morning; my feet felt better and I was reason- 
 ably cheerful. I tried the road my landlord 
 told me of, but found the walking not so good 
 as on the track and soon went back to the rail- 
 road. At noon I ate my last apple pie. I had 
 had a respite and it tasted very good, though 
 its long stay in my ulster pocket imparted a 
 sort of a clothy flavor that didn't help it any. 
 
 Those nineteen miles to Paris were long and 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 131 
 
 weary, especially as the only food I had was 
 the apple pie. It must have been nine o'clock 
 when I got in. A railroad section man let me 
 bnnk with him and gave me a big sandwich of 
 corned beef and thick bread. I got a cnp of 
 coffee and two biscuits for breakfast and started 
 for Brantford, eight miles away. By this time 
 I looked like a tramp. My face was covered 
 with a, bright-red stubble of a beard ; my trous- 
 ers were tied round my ankles with heavy 
 string; my overshoes were badly scuffed out, 
 and I was much wrinkled and mussed. How- 
 ever, by wearing my ulster when I was near a 
 village and pulling my hat down over my eyes, 
 I managed to get through without trouble until 
 I reached Brantford. 
 
 At Brantford a constable nailed me. He said 
 tramps were his special meat and he was con- 
 vinced he had a fine specimen in me. I didn't 
 blame him any; but I talked him out of taking 
 me to the lockup and got on such good terms 
 with him that he told me of a hayloft filled with 
 hay, where I might get in and sleep. Brant- 
 
132 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 ford, it seemed, had no accommodations for 
 young gentlemen of the road like myself. Nor 
 was there any place to get anything to eat. I 
 was faint with hunger, but I crawled into the 
 hay, buried myself to the neck and was soon 
 asleep. The man who owned the barn came in 
 early next morning, carrying a tin pail. He 
 fussed round on the ground floor of the bam 
 for a time and then went out. I slid down the 
 ladder, grabbed the pail and vanished. I 
 thought it might be his dinner bucket. When 
 I got a mile away I opened the pail. I had 
 guessed correctly. There was a chunk of boiled 
 beef, some bread and butter and a wedge of 
 apple pie. I threw the pie away. 
 
 It was twenty-four miles to Hamilton, a city 
 of considerable size, and it took me two days 
 to make it. The food in the dinner pail kept 
 me going all that day; and at night a farmer 
 let me sleep in his house and gave me some 
 soggy potatoes and fried salt pork and tea for 
 breakfast, for fifty cents. I surreptitiously 
 slipped a few slices of the fried pork into my 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 133 
 
 coat pocket and later transferred them to my 
 ulster pocket That ulster pocket was my com- 
 missary. The fried pork held me until I 
 reached Hamilton, where I was extremely wary 
 about railroad detectives in the railroad yards. 
 I figured that I must be somewhat presentable 
 in that city, for I hoped to find a way to get 
 some money. I found a barber shop near the 
 station, got a shave for ten cents and turned 
 my collar. Then I buttoned my ulster round 
 my neck, threw away the remains of my over- 
 shoes and swaggered into the station. I had a 
 look at myself in the glass, and, though my 
 clothes were somewhat rumpled, I didn't look 
 so badly. And I was almost eighty miles on 
 my way. 
 
 There was a lunch counter in the Hamilton 
 station. It was more ornate than the one at 
 London, but it had the same sorts of sand- 
 wiches on it, the same doughnuts, the same 
 cakes and the same apple pies ! An apple-pie 
 Nemesis had me in her fell clutches. A train 
 came in. The passengers crowded up to the 
 
134 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 lunch counter. I edged in and edged out. Wlien 
 tHe train was called I had edged in and edged 
 out four times — and I had six nice little brown 
 apple pies in my ulster pockets ! I tried to get 
 some sandwiches, but they were covered with 
 paper and stuck, though the apple pies slid 
 into my pockets easily. I guess I was calloused 
 by that time, a hardened apple-pie burglar, for 
 I never did try to pay them back for that lot. 
 
 It is in the neighborhood of forty-five miles 
 from Hamilton to Niagara Falls. It took me 
 four days to make that trip, and I had the hard- 
 est time of the outing. It grew very cold. I 
 had to sleep in a straw stack one night. They 
 arrested me in St. Catharine's, but the judge 
 turned out to be my friend. He wore a Masonic 
 charm on his watch-chain. I wasn't a Mason, 
 of course, being less than nineteen at the time, 
 but my father was; and I told him that, and 
 told him so convincingly that he not only let 
 me go, but lent me a dollar besides. 
 
 I ate those six nice little brown apple pies 
 in the course of those four terrible days, and 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 135 
 
 not much else ; for I was saving my money for 
 a shave and a clean collar and a general clean-np 
 at the Falls and a ride in. I didn't know just 
 how I could do all that for a dollar-eighty, but 
 I had hopes. I ate those six nice little brown 
 apple pies; and for ten years after that I 
 couldn't look an apple pie in the face. 
 
 My experiences along the road had taught me 
 to go into towns by the back streets and I came 
 into Niagara Falls in just that way. I escaped 
 the police on the Canadian side, got over the 
 bridge all right and walked down to take my 
 first near view of the American Falls. I was 
 standing on the parapet watching the Falls and 
 wondering how much it cost to go to Buffalo by 
 train, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. ^'Po- 
 lice ! " I thought ; and as I turned I exclaimed, 
 ** Please, sir, I haven't been doing anything!" 
 
 The man who tapped me on the shoulder 
 laughed. He was a man from my home town 
 who was a consul at Clifton. He happened to 
 be in Niagara Falls, saw me on the street and 
 followed me. 
 
136 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 *^ What's the matter*?" he asked. 
 
 I told him. Three hours later I started for 
 Buffalo, bathed, shaved, with new linen and 
 new shoes — and with enough money in my 
 pocket to get me home. Four days after I got 
 home my mother died. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 137 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 As soon as possible I began looking for an- 
 other place. I went down to see my former 
 city editor, bnt neither he nor the managing 
 editor displayed any enthusiasm about having 
 me rejoin the staif. They told me I had been 
 a fool to quit and go off on a wild-goose chase 
 after editorial fame and fortune the way I did, 
 and I knew they were right, although I didn't 
 care for their method of imparting the truth 
 to me. I visited all the other city editors in 
 the place, but apparently I had not sufficiently 
 impressed myself on the journalism of that 
 locality to make it imperative to secure my serv- 
 ices; in fact, they all said they could worry 
 along without me, and they all did. 
 
 I was then nineteen, had learned a bitter les- 
 son, and was anxious to return into the business 
 at whatever salary might be offered. I looked 
 
138 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 back at the days when I had received ten dol- 
 lars a week and thought that a princely income. 
 Papers in two or three other cities in the state 
 wanted men, I heard, and I applied, but soon 
 learned they didn't need me. I knew I could do 
 as good work as half the men on these papers, if 
 not better, but I couldn't make anybody else 
 think so. Besides, it was summertime and they 
 were letting out men — they said — instead of 
 taking them on. Nobody on earth appeared to 
 have the slightest desire for my valuable serv- 
 ices. I tried applying by letter — speaking en- 
 thusiastically about my capabilities and vast ex- 
 perience — all the way from Portland, Oregon, 
 to Portland, Maine, and didn't get a rise. 
 
 Hence I turned my attention to general litera- 
 ture. I essayed fiction, poetry, special articles 
 and all other branches of that fascinating pur- 
 suit. One periodical took a story, promised 
 me ten dollars and didn't pay. After a few 
 weeks I concluded there was no nourishment in 
 that, so with a couple of friends I built a shack 
 in the woods on the shore of a lake a few miles 
 
ISTEWSPAPER MAN 139 
 
 from home and went out there to spend the 
 summer and think things over. Foraging was 
 good, the fish bit well and the problem of living 
 was easily solved. After long reflection I con- 
 eluded I was a dub and might just as well live 
 out my life in that shack as a hermit. I planned 
 it to the last detail. It was manifestly impos- 
 sible to be a hermit that summer, for the other 
 boys were with me, there were plenty of young 
 people camping and living in cottages at the 
 lake, and there were dances and corn-roasts and 
 fishing parties and excursions and picnics and 
 other festivities to be engaged in — and, inex- 
 perienced in hermiting as I was, I knew that 
 festi^dties were not compatible with the job. 
 But when winter came I intended to remain 
 there, let my hair and whiskers grow — I could 
 picture myself with a long, flowing red beard — 
 and settle down to hermit out the rest of my 
 pitiful existence. 
 
 It was a lively summer. I had a lot of fun 
 at no expense save the exertion of catching fish 
 and garnering other foodstuff. Clothes did not 
 
140 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 bother me, and except when the girls were along 
 no shoes were worn. I fully decided I was a 
 failure, and had rather pleasant anticipations 
 of long winter nights alone in the shack, with 
 no company but my thoughts and my faithful 
 dog. I didn't have a faithful dog, but I was 
 sure I could find one somewhere. Then on 
 the first of August a man from the telegraph 
 office at the head of the lake came up with a 
 telegram for me. It was from my old managing 
 editor, and said if I wanted to come back and 
 substitute during the vacation season he would 
 give me that place and my original ten dollars 
 a week. 
 
 He told me to answer by wire. I didn't do 
 that. I answered in person, arriving there the 
 next morning and forgetting all about my 
 hermit decision. Indeed I think I should have 
 made a mighty poor hermit, and probably it 
 is just as well. 
 
 I fell easily back into the old swing and 
 worked until the middle of September. Then 
 the boys were all back from their vacations and 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 141 
 
 the editors told me they were sorry but they 
 had no place for me. I had been frugal during 
 this employment and had saved a few dollars, 
 and I didn't mind dismissal much. I had an 
 idea I wanted to branch out again and had been 
 writing round to several people on the office 
 letter heads. 
 
 I had a nibble from a big city in another state. 
 Under most careful nursing the nibble devel- 
 oped into a bite, and on the day I left my sub- 
 stitute job I started for the other city. I didn't 
 know what I should get, but I was ready to 
 tackle anything from leading editorial articles 
 to imdertakers and morgue, and had endeavored 
 to impress on that editor my ability to do just 
 that. 
 
 I went round to see the man who had asked 
 me to come on. It was on Saturday afternoon. 
 He told me he was busy, gave me a ticket to 
 the theatre and said I should come in late on 
 Sunday afternoon and he would see what he 
 could do. The show was Dixey in Adonis, and 
 had Amelia Summerville playing the Merry Lit- 
 
142 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 tie Mountain Maid. I was all cheered up with 
 the idea of getting work and applauded every- 
 thing enthusiastically. I was a couple of hours 
 ahead of time at the office next day, and the 
 editor was an hour late, which gave me a creepy 
 feeling. Perhaps he didn^t mean it! 
 
 He did, though. He came in presently, read 
 his letters, gave some orders and then told the 
 boy to bring me in. He was a kindly man and 
 listened tolerantly to my enthusiastic recital of 
 my experience and abilities. Then he said: **I 
 had expected to put you on the local staff, but 
 the situation has changed"^ — ^my heart sank into 
 my shoes at that — ^'and I cannot spend any 
 more money in that direction just at present. 
 However, now that I have brought you on, I can 
 ^x you temporarily" — my spirits rose again in 
 a rush — ' ^ and will give you a place as assistant 
 proofreader. The salary will be fifteen dollars 
 a week." 
 
 Assistant proofreader ! That was worse than 
 I had expected even in my most pessimistic mo- 
 ments. My disappointment showed in my face, 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 143 
 
 for lie leaned over and said gently: '^I am 
 sorry, my boy, but I don't own this paper. If 
 I did things might be different. I am working 
 for wages here jnst as the others are, and sub- 
 ject to the whims of the man who pays those 
 wages. Be a sport and take this place, and 
 presently I can ^x you.'* 
 
 I gulped two or three times and then straight- 
 ened up in the chair. ^^All right," I answered. 
 ''When do I go to workr' 
 
 '* To-night. Report to Mac, the head proof- 
 reader, in the composing room at six-thirty. 
 Good afternoon.'^ 
 
144 THE MAiaNG OF A 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Mac was a thin, cadaverous man, who had 
 asthma and smoked cubeb cigarettes. He had, 
 in addition to his asthma, a chronic grouch 
 against all editors, reporters, printers and all 
 other branches of the newspaper business, and 
 claimed they would all show themselves as igno- 
 ramuses if he wasn't there to catch and correct 
 their errors. He was largely right. Mac had 
 a great deal of information packed into that 
 asthmatic head of his. 
 
 The composing room was on the top floor of 
 a four or five-story building, I forget which. 
 The business ofSce and editorial rooms were 
 on the ground floor, and the lofts between were 
 vacant. There was no elevator. I remember 
 perfectly how my footsteps on the stairs echoed 
 dismally through those vacant lofts as I climbed 
 Tip to the composing room for my first night's 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 145 
 
 work. I wasn't especially cheerful either. It 
 was pretty tough for a rising young journalist, 
 who imagined he kaew all there was to know 
 about the business, to be reading proof. Still 
 I had made up my mind I would do anything 
 round that place before I would quit, and I 
 went in and introduced myself to Mac. He, 
 looked at me curiously. 
 
 *^Ever read proof T' he asked. 
 
 I told him I had, and detailed my experience 
 in the local room where I began my newspaper- 
 work. 
 
 Mac sniffed. ''Great Scott!" he said, ''an-, 
 other stuff unloaded on me by that soft-hearted 
 managing editor! Does he think I am running 
 a kindergarten up here!" 
 
 It seemed so to me, but I didn't answer. I; 
 held copy all that first night and read revises. 
 Mac was one of the most expert proofreaders 
 I have ever known, and his need really was a 
 copy-holder and revise reader, with a man to 
 jump in and take a few galleys during the late- 
 rush. He almost could handle the job alone.^ 
 
 to — Newspaper Man. 
 
146 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 The proofreaders^ desks were in the composing 
 room, a lively and interesting place, and there 
 was a good deal of loafing-time in the early 
 hours when copy was slow. From midnight on 
 the proof desk was the busiest place in the es- 
 tablishment. 
 
 I made up my mind I might just as well be 
 friends with Mac, who at heart was a mighty 
 good fellow, and I laid myself out to win him. 
 It didn't take long. Mac saw I was a rank 
 amateur, but I had told him how much I needed 
 the job, and he excused my stupidity and errors 
 and encouraged me by saying I had the mak- 
 ings of a proofreader in me. He worked on 
 his first night off after I got there, too, so the 
 job wouldn't fall on me before I knew the ropes, 
 and we became fast friends. Incident ally ^ Mao 
 taught me a great deal about reading proof and 
 gave me graphic and exact information about 
 each member of the statf. I knew all their 
 weaknesses and all the gossip about them and 
 could tell their copy the minute it came to hand. 
 Some of them were pretty bad and some were 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 147 
 
 good, bnt it wasn't long before I was convinced 
 I was as good as any of them and only needed 
 an opportunity to prove it. 
 
 I had plenty of time to myself, as I got off 
 about four o 'clock in the morning and slept until 
 noon, thus having the afternoons for myself. I 
 found a room about a mile from the office. The 
 landlady said I could have it for two dollars and 
 a half a week if I would room with another 
 young man. She brought up the other young 
 man. He was a West Virginian who was study- 
 ing to be an undertaker, and had the room filled 
 with the tools and textbooks of his profession. 
 He slept at night and I slept in the daytime, so 
 the arrangement worked well, and I gathered 
 considerable information from him about em- 
 balming and kindred topics. I couldn 't see why 
 anybody should want to be an undertaker and 
 he was at a loss to understand why anybody 
 should read proof for a living, so we started 
 out on a mutual basis of disagreement and got 
 along famously. 
 
 My fifteen dollars a week kept me going 
 
148 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 nicely, but I was lonely, for I rarely came in 
 contact with any of the men on the editorial 
 staff, except the night editor. They held an 
 assistant proofreader in low esteem anyhow. 
 So my companion on my nights off was the 
 embryo undertaker, who was a fine chap. We 
 went to theatres together and, as Saturday was 
 payday with me and my day off, we indulged in 
 a chop and a bottle of ale afterward and im- 
 agined we were rolling high. On Saturdays, 
 too, I smoked my only ten-cent cigar of the 
 week. The rest of the time I smoked stogies 
 that came about seven for ten cents. I found a 
 cheap restaurant where I could get breakfast 
 and dinner for fifty cents a day, and at mid- 
 night a man came into the office with sandwiches 
 and coffee. So I saved some money. 
 
 I had been working for about three weeks 
 and everybody in the editorial rooms had for- 
 gotten my existence, except once when I let a 
 bad bull go through on a revise and heard from 
 it emphatically, when the foreman came over 
 to Mac about midniarht and said: ^^What do 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 149 
 
 you know about this I That stiff that writes 
 the alleged paragraphs for the editorial page 
 hasn't showed up to-night and I'm ready to close 
 that page."^ 
 
 ' * Close it^ ' ' said Mac. ^ ' It will be better with- 
 out them.'' 
 
 It so happened that the editorial paragrapher 
 was a nephew of the man who owned the paper 
 and had no ability, but was kept on the paper 
 because his uncle didn't know what else to do 
 with him. He had picked out paragraphing as 
 the softest job on the paper, though real iDara- 
 graphing is one of the hardest, there being then 
 and now but few writers who are good at it. 
 
 Here was a chance for me. ''How many do 
 you need?" I asked eagerly. 
 
 **0h, half a dozen or so to make a showing," 
 the foreman said. ''Why I" 
 
 ''I'll write them." 
 
 The foreman and Mac laughed. "Go to it," 
 the foreman said. I wrote eight. When they 
 came through in proof Mac read them carefully 
 and said: "Not so rotten." That was higli 
 
150 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 praise from Mac. Next night the nephew came 
 up and asked Mac : ^^^Hio wrote the paragraphs 
 last night ? ' ' Mac jerked his thumb at me. The 
 nephew took me aside. ^'Keep it np/' he said, 
 ^*and I'll fix it with my uncle so you get down- 
 stairs. I hate paragraphing anyhow. I want 
 to be sporting editor.'' 
 
 So I wrote the paragraphs every night for 
 a week and gave them to the nephew, who copied 
 them and handed them in. Then the managing 
 editor came up. ''Who's writing those para- 
 graphs?" he asked. They told him I was. 
 ^'Quit it," he ordered. ''Do you think I'm 
 going to let that lobster get by this way! Chop 
 it, or I'll fire you." 
 
 That was a body blow. I hoped the managing 
 editor would recognize true merit and take me 
 downstairs, but he didn't. Still I had plenty 
 to do. The night editor found I knew something 
 about make-up, and he let me make up the 
 early pages while he luxuriated in a place near 
 by. The foreman and the assistant foreman 
 hecame my firm friends and I found some of 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 151 
 
 the printers were pretty good companions. So 
 at the end of the first month I was reasonably 
 well contented, was getting an insight into com- 
 posing-room methods that stood me in good 
 stead later, and was sending down a few spe- 
 cial articles to the managing editor, some of 
 which he ran in when copy was short. 
 
 Then I had a smashing blow in the face. One 
 morning about &ve o 'clock, after work was over 
 and I had been sitting round and talking with 
 Mac and the foreman, I started down the long 
 stairs through the vacant lofts to go to my 
 room. My eyes had been hurting a good deal 
 for a couple of weeks and I had vaguely con- 
 sidered going to see a doctor about them. I 
 was using them hard and continuously under 
 the electric light on the proofs and not taking" 
 any too much sleep, for I was exploring the 
 city and trying to find material for special 
 articles. I walked down the stairs and out on 
 the street. Just as I reached the sidewalk all' 
 the lights seemed to go out and things became 
 utterly black before me. I couldn't figure out 
 
152 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 what was the matter, but stood uncertainly on 
 the walk, unable to see at all. 
 
 I heard somebody coming out and called, 
 *'Who is it I" It was Mac. I told him what 
 had happened. I could hear him muttering 
 under his breath. He took me by the arm and 
 led me to my room. On the way I realized that 
 I had become blind. I couldn't see! I almost 
 collapsed when I got that straight in my head. 
 Mac had been cheering me up all the way. 
 
 ^^Mac," I quavered, * that's the matter with 
 me? Am I blind r' 
 
 ^^ Don't worry about that,'^ soothed Mac. 
 •'I've seen this happen a lot of times," he lied 
 encouragingly. '*A few days' rest and you'll 
 be all right. I'll have the doctor over to see 
 you early in the morning." 
 
 Mac led me to my room and helped me un- 
 dress. He told the student of undertaking to 
 look after me, which he did, and I lay there in 
 total darkness until nine o'clock, thinking it 
 might be just as well to kill myself and have 
 it over with. The doctor came at nine o'clock. 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 153 
 
 Mac hadn't gone to bed, but had called a famous 
 oculist and came with him. Afterward I learned 
 that grouchy, asthmatic, cynical, sardonic Mac 
 had guaranteed the doctor's bill. 
 
 The doctor said the trouble was merely tem- 
 porary. I needed glasses, and a few days in 
 a dark room would fix me all right. This helped 
 a lot and the student of undertaking stayed with 
 me like a nurse. He quit his studies and read 
 to me and told me stories about his adventures, 
 and Mac dropped in every day with the news 
 of the office. On the fifth day my sight came 
 back as suddenly as it had left me, the doctor 
 fitted me to a pair of glasses and I was appar- 
 ently all right. That day Mac came in in a 
 state of excitement for him. 
 
 '^Say, kid," he said, ^ there's a guy got a 
 paper down in the next state who wants an 
 editor. Here's his name. Write to him and 
 maybe you'll get the job." 
 
154 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 CHAPTEE XVIII 
 
 I wrote and then went back to work Mac 
 favored me a lot for two or three days. The 
 new glasses worked well and I was getting 
 rapidly into the old stride when, one morning 
 about ten o'clock, the landlady knocked on my 
 door and said there was a gentleman to see me. 
 He came up. It was the man to whom I had 
 written about the editorship. 
 
 We talked for a time and he said I seemed 
 to be just the man he wanted. He said there 
 was a big strike on in his town; that he and 
 another man who had been working in the mills 
 had started the paper to take the side of the 
 strikers; that they had plenty of money and 
 that it was a mighty good game. 
 
 He said the town was all in sympathy with 
 the strikers and the union, and that the other 
 papers were owned by the corporations; and 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 155 
 
 it was the chance of a life tune to jump in and 
 grab all the business and circulation in the 
 place. 
 
 ^^But,'' he said, ^^ before I hire you I want 
 to see what you can do. I notice on the news- 
 paper bulletin boards in town that Jefferson 
 Davis is dead'' — he wasn't, it was a false re- 
 port — ' ' and I wish you would write me a column 
 editorial on Davis, remembering that our city 
 is about half Union and half Confederate. Give 
 him his deserts, but don't slop over on him." 
 
 I spent the afternoon writing my opinion of 
 Jefferson Davis for a constituency half Union 
 and half Confederate, and mailed the result 
 to the owner. Two mornings later I received a 
 letter from him containing a railroad mileage 
 book and an invitation to come on and take the 
 job. He said the editorial was great and he 
 regretted that Davis had not died, so that he 
 might use it. However, he promised to save it 
 until the proper time should come. 
 
 I asked the managing editor if there was any 
 chance of my getting downstairs, and he said 
 
156 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 there wasn't at that time; so I quit, bade good- 
 bye to Mac and my friends in the composing 
 room, packed my trunk, had a last chop and 
 bottle of ale with the student of undertaking 
 and took the train on Monday morning early. 
 The owner was at the station to meet me. 
 
 ^'Come on up to my house for dinner," he 
 said. ^^Then we will go down to the office." 
 
 We walked up to his house. As we came in 
 he called up the stairs, ^^Mary, dear, IVe got 
 our new editor here for dinner." 
 
 '*You have?" replied Mary acidly. ''How 
 nice of you! And this washday and not a 
 thing for dinner but vegetable soup and cold 
 meat! You have got about as much sense as 
 a canary bird." 
 
 ' ' Don 't mind that, ' '' he whispered. ' ' I plumb 
 forgot it was washday." 
 
 It wasn't so bad as Mary had said. At din- 
 ner the owner told me the story of the great 
 strike, how he had started his paper, how much 
 money he and his partner had, how it was 
 doing, and afterward we went down to the office. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 157 
 
 it was located up one flight of stairs. As we 
 entered I saw that the outfit was not much bet- 
 ter than the one I had owned the year before. 
 I had a chill. Still I found that he had ar- 
 ranged for a condensed telegraph service, that 
 he really had a telegraph wire running into 
 the place and an operator, and that there was 
 an experienced man working as the entire local 
 staff. He had a fairly good press and the busi- 
 ness end of it was all right. 
 
 The local staff came in and I met him. He 
 was a reporter in hard luck, like myself, but 
 he had had about ten times as much experience 
 as I had. However, the owner made me editor- 
 in-chief and we went at it. The telegraph oper- 
 ator, who wasn't very affluent himself, took the 
 telegraph report, wrote the heads and rewrote 
 the important items, expanding them as much 
 as he could. The local staff and the editor-in- 
 chief got and wrote all the local, the editorial 
 articles, most of the advertising, made up, read 
 proof — in short, we got out the paper. We 
 lambasted the tar out of the criminal corpor- 
 
158 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 ations that were oppressing the strikers, and 
 had a gay old time. Salary was regular for 
 a time. Then it became wobbly. It cost more 
 to run a new paper than onr owners supposed 
 and the corporations were putting on the screws 
 wherever possible. My fifteen dollars a week 
 dwindled some weeks to six and seven dollars 
 and some orders on merchants who advertised. 
 It didn't look good. 
 
 One day the local staff threw me over a letter. 
 It was from a man in a Southern city who 
 wanted an editor. '^Take it," he said; ^^I am 
 going north when this blows up." 
 
 I went out and telegraphed. I had an an- 
 swer that afternoon telling me to come on, and 
 next day I quit and started south. All told 
 I had about seventy-five dollars in money I 
 had laboriously saved. "When I got to my town 
 I found I was in with another new proposition. 
 There was a big and influential paper in the 
 city and this one had been started by a dis- 
 gruntled politician who had been kept out of 
 the graft. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 159 
 
 This man gave me twenty dollars a week, and 
 my duties consisted entirely in an editorial 
 supervision of the paper and the writing of 
 editorial articles attacking his enemies. We had 
 three reporters and were well fixed in handling 
 the local. 
 
 I fussed round for a week getting the lay of 
 the land, and then one afternoon I let go a 
 screamer about the local boss and some of his 
 henchmen. That article certainly did call those 
 persons by their right names. The boss was 
 so tickled with it that he had it put on the first ^ 
 
 column of the first page and double-leaded. 
 When the paper came up the city editor walked 
 over to my desk. 
 
 '* Better keep under cover for a few days,'^ 
 he advised. 
 
 ^^W^hy?'^Iasked. 
 
 **That stuff means shooting down here,'' he 
 told me, ^^and they're just as likely to shoot 
 you as not." 
 
 That was a contingency that had not appealed 
 to me. There was nothing in being shot, so far 
 
 % 
 
160 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 as I could see. Nothing happened. The local 
 political reporter told me the politicians 
 growled some, but that was all. Three days 
 later I printed another. At the end of the 
 week we put one out that made the first one 
 look like a tract. By this time I was convinced 
 that all this talk about shooting was a bluff, 
 and I dismissed it from my mind. I was elated, 
 too, for we were getting action. The people 
 began to side with us, and the boss said all we 
 had to do was to keep at it and we would drive 
 them all to their holes. 
 
 ^^That last one almost took the rag off the 
 bush,'^ he exclaimed enthusiastically. ^^Give 
 them another to-morrow and we'll have them 
 on the run. ' ' 
 
 Then he raised my salary to twenty-five dol- 
 lars a week and took me out to luncheon. We 
 walked down the street. As we turned the cor- 
 ner a man stepped out of a doorway, holding 
 something bright and shiny in his hand. I re- 
 member looking at him curiously and wonder- 
 ing what the shiny thing was. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 161 
 
 **Diick!'^ yelled tlie boss, diving for a door- 
 way and tugging at Ms hip pocket. 
 
 I heard a sharp report and something whizzed 
 by my head. It sounded like a big bee buzzing. 
 Then I realized the man with the shiny thing 
 in his hand was shooting at me. I don^t re- 
 member whether I got into that store through 
 the transom over the door or through the plate- 
 glass window. I got in somehow and landed 
 behind a counter. The boss had unlimbered his 
 pistol by this time and was peppering at the 
 man in the street from behind a soda-water 
 fountain. Each fired five times. They were 
 poor shots. Neither was hit. The man in the 
 street disappeared up an alley and the boss 
 loaded his pistol and took a careful reconnois- 
 sance. ''Come on,'' he said to me. ''It's all 
 over for the time being. We'll eat now." 
 
 I didn't eat anything. It didn't seem time for 
 gustatory exercises. Instead I hurried back to 
 the office. There the local political reporter im- 
 parted the cheerful information to me that the 
 gang had decided to "get" this fresh North- 
 
 / / — Newspaper Man. 
 
162 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 erner who had come down there and was abus- 
 ing them, and that probably I was due to be 
 shot sooner or later. He said they expected to 
 shoot both the boss and myself that day. 
 
 The boss was used to that sort of politics, 
 but I wasn't; and after writing a flaming story 
 about the attempt of cowardly assassins to mur- 
 der in cold blood the fearless publicists who had 
 dared to tell the truth about them, and defying 
 them and calling them many other fancy names 
 to the extent of a column and a half, I decided 
 that I needed a change of air and I took it. 
 Years later one of the men who was in the plot 
 to shoot me told me they only desired to scare 
 me. I told him they succeeded in their desire. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 163 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX 
 
 I had expanded a little, so far as living ex- 
 penses went, and didn't have as much money 
 when I left as I had when I arrived ; but I had 
 enough to get to a big Southwestern city some 
 hundreds of miles north, and I went there. In 
 a week or so I had a place as one of the as- 
 sistants to the sporting editor of a morning 
 paper. My part of the work was to look out 
 for the amateur ball games and amateur sport 
 of all kinds. I got twenty dollars a week. That 
 place didn't last long. One of the peculiarities 
 of the editor was to discharge the first man in 
 on any morning when the opposition morning 
 paper beat us on a big story. I didn't know 
 that. One morning after I had been there a 
 week or so I came whistling into the office about 
 eleven o'clock. The editor was standing in the 
 middle of the local room, with a crumpled copy 
 
164 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 of our paper in his hand, on the alert for his 
 victim. 
 
 ''Get out!'' he squeaked. ^*6et out! You're 
 fired! Get out!" 
 
 ''What fori" I asked in amazement. 
 
 "Don't stand there asking fool questions. 
 You're fired, I tell you! Get out!" 
 
 And he stamped back to his room. I waited 
 at the foot of the stairs until the sporting editor 
 came along and then I told him of my experi- 
 ence. "By George!" he said, '^I forgot to tell 
 you about the old man. I'm sorry. Where do 
 you expect to go now?" 
 
 The sporting editor fixed it so that I got the 
 few dollars coming to me on my second week, 
 and I walked over to the hotel and sat down in 
 the lobby and thought bitter thoughts concern- 
 ing the injustice of things in general and of that 
 squeaky-voiced maniac of an editor in particu- 
 lar. That got me nowhere. Neither did my ap- 
 plications for work on the other papers. So I 
 decided to go West. 
 
 The most convenient way to travel, I thought 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 165 
 
 was to travel light, so I sold my little stock of 
 personal possessions to a second-hand dealer, 
 keeping my best suit — I had two then — and 
 bought a soft hat and a gray flannel shirt. I 
 sold everything I had except a few handker- 
 chiefs and a change of underwear. Then I 
 visited the ticket scalpers. I found a ticket for 
 eleven dollars that would take me a good long 
 way toward the setting sun, and I bought it. 
 That night I walked down to the office, shook 
 my fist at the editor's room and took the train. 
 
 The town I landed in was a railroad centre 
 with two poor newspapers. They didn't want 
 any men. I had about decided to try another 
 trip and beat my way when I got a job as barker 
 for a restaurant near the railroad station. My 
 business was to stand outside the restaurant 
 when trains came in and call the attention of 
 the passengers who got off to the unrivaled col- 
 lection of comestibles within at cheap prices. 
 
 I fixed up a fancy line of vocal allurement 
 for the unsuspecting traveling public and was 
 quite successful in getting them to come in. The 
 
166 THE MAKING OF K 
 
 proprietor told me I was the best barker lie 
 bad ever bad. Besides, my habits were good 
 and I was always in shape to work. He saved 
 good food for me and, although I was in hourly 
 fear that some one I knew might come along and 
 discover the predicament of a rising young 
 journalist, I had a good time, a clean place to 
 sleep and plenty to eat. Naturally I made 
 friends with the regular customers. A good 
 many of the conductors used to eat there. The 
 town was a division point, and after a month 
 or so the conductors knew me well enough to 
 befriend me. 
 
 *^Say, kid, said one of them, ^^ what's your 
 idea in standing out here and yelling your head 
 off about this bum grubT' 
 
 *^T\Tiy," I replied, ^'IVe got to do something 
 and this seems to be the only opening here for 
 a bright young man like myself.'' 
 
 *^How'd you like to go East?" he asked. 
 
 I told him I had come out there to grow up 
 with the country, but, now that he had men- 
 tioned it, the East looked pretty good to me and 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 167 
 
 I'd like to go that way better than anything I 
 knew. 
 
 ^'All right," he said, ^*hop on my train when 
 I go ont to-night." 
 
 I hopped on, much to the displeasure of the 
 proprietor of the restaurant, who told me I was 
 ruining a promising career as a barker by quit- 
 ting him in that way. I rode in state to the 
 end of that conductor's run and he passed me 
 on to the next conductor. This lasted all the 
 way to Chicago, where I arrived sleek and well 
 fed and with money in my pocket. Also I ar- 
 rived in a sombrero and a pair of tan-colored 
 boots that I had bought from a cowboy who was 
 financially embarrassed at the moment of the 
 sale and was willing to sacrifice these treasures 
 for the wherewithal to procure rum. 
 
 There was a man whom I had known as a 
 boy who kept a hotel in that town, and I hunted 
 him up. He was glad to see me and extended 
 the hospitalities of his place to me for as long 
 as I cared to stay. I tried all the newspaper 
 offices, but soon found that Chicago newspaper 
 
168 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 offices were different from those to which I had 
 been accustomed. I got no farther than the 
 dinky reception rooms in most of them, and had 
 the most emphatic refusal of work from a man 
 who, ten or fifteen years later, gave me a most 
 important position. I rather expected to have 
 no luck and I didn't care much. If worst came 
 to worst I could get another job as barker in 
 a restaurant, or waiter or assistant manager, for 
 I had kept my eyes open and knew a lot of the 
 tricks of cheap eating places. 
 
 Once in a while the boys on the old. paper 
 wrote to me. I had written to most of them 
 from Chicago. One day I got a telegram from 
 one of the boys on the old paper. ' ' Come on, ' ' 
 it read; ^^the chief says you can have a place 
 on the local staff.'' 
 
 I went on that night, first disposing of my 
 sombrero and tan-colored boots. I hated to do 
 that, but I figured I wouldn't make much of a 
 hit in the old local room in that rig. I knew 
 that from the guying I got on the streets of 
 Chicago. When I arrived the chief told me I 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 169 
 
 could go to work, if I wanted to, for fifteen dol- 
 lars a week. I grabbed that fifteen. And there 
 I was back again where I started. He didn't 
 know it, and I didn't tell him, but I would have 
 taken ten. 
 
 There was a new city editor, a friend of mine 
 and a fine chap. He gave me an opportunity. 
 He handed me good assigiiments and I pro- 
 gressed rapidly. It wasn't long before I had 
 the introductions to all the big stories and was 
 allowed to write specials when nothing big was 
 stirring. Still I had my troubles. One night 
 about half past six I was sitting in the office, 
 finishing some work. All the other boys had 
 gone to dinner. The telephone bell rang. I 
 answered the call, which was from the police 
 station. The lieutenant said there had been a 
 murder out in the eastern part of the city ; that 
 a woman had been found in the cellar of her 
 house strangled, and that the coroner was just 
 starting for the place. 
 
 I knew the coroner would have to drive past 
 our office, so I left a note for the city editor 
 
170 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 telling him I was on the case and jumped down- 
 stairs. The coroner came by; I stopped him 
 and he let me ride with him. "We reached the 
 scene of the murder in half an honr. The house 
 was a story-and-a-half affair in an outside 
 subdivision of the city, and the building nearest 
 to it was a hundred yards away. The woman 
 had been found by her husband — ^who was a 
 tinner and had been working on a roof on the 
 same street — ^when he returned for supper at 
 six o ^clock She had been dragged to a corner 
 of the cellar and strangled by a cloth flour-bag 
 that was wound tightly round her neck. 
 
 It was a good story. I had a crack at it be- 
 fore the police got there, and I talked to every- 
 body and got everything bearing on the case. 
 Nobody had seen a man go in or out of the 
 house, but it was apparent that the woman had 
 been killed soon after dinner, for she had been 
 washing that day and her clothes were still in 
 the tub. The husband said she had left the 
 clothes in the tub in order to prepare the din- 
 ner and then eat it with him. I discovered, or 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 171 
 
 thought I discovered, that the husband and wife 
 were not on good terms, and that was enough 
 for me. I got back to the office about nine 
 o'clock, bursting with the story, which was the 
 most sensational murder we had had for some 
 time. I told the city editor what I had and he 
 shouted excitedly: ^^ Write every darned line 
 you can! You can have all the space in the 
 paper. And put hair on it!'' That meant to 
 make the story sensational, which I was aching 
 to do. 
 
 I sat down and went at it, always bearing in 
 mind my instructions to liven it up, and I turned 
 out a dime-novel yarn about that murder. It 
 had hair on it, all right. When I got to the 
 identity of the murderer or to the discussion 
 of motives I was going finely. With the in- 
 formation I had concerning the woman's trouble 
 with her husband I dashed off this gem, while 
 describing the body and its discovery by the 
 reporter and the coroner: ^^As she lay there, 
 there was an expression on her face that forced 
 the thought that she had been struck by one 
 
172 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 she loved; not pain, not anger, only surprise 
 and grief. '^ 
 
 We all thought that was great when the 
 proofs came down, and it certainly did look 
 fine in full-face type in the paper next morning. 
 Then the afternoon papers came out and each 
 had an editorial condemning the paper for 
 printing an accusation of this kind against the 
 husband, who clearly was not the murderer; 
 condemning the editor who passed it, and par- 
 ticularly telling how many kinds of a fool the 
 reporter was who wrote it. One of the editorial 
 writers went a bit into my journalistic history, 
 to my confusion, and both agreed I was a star- 
 spangled donkey and should be sweeping streets 
 instead of working as a reporter. That started 
 all the ^*Pro Bono Publico^' and ** Amazed 
 Reader'^ letter4o-the-editors boys, and the way 
 they scalped me was sickening. It got to be 
 more of a sensation than the murder itself. 
 Two preachers preached about the ** Irresponsi- 
 bility of the Press" on the following Sunday 
 night, and one of them flayed me alive. The 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 173 
 
 opposition papers printed the sermons in fnll 
 and the weekly papers took a hack at it. I 
 sneaked round on the back streets for a fort- 
 night. I expected to be discharged, but the 
 managing editor never mentioned the thing to 
 me. 
 
174 Tim MAKING OE A 
 
 CHAPTEE XX 
 
 Not long after this I had further proof that 
 the managing editor was my friend. It had 
 been announced that Larry Donovan, who had 
 emulated Steve Brodie and had jumped from 
 the Brooklyn Bridge, was coming to our town 
 to jump over our falls, a feat that had never 
 been accomplished successfully. For six nights 
 I had the assignment, ^^Find Larry Donovan.'' 
 For six nights I kept on the trail of Larry, and 
 he did not arrive. On the seventh night I had 
 the same assignment. That night I played pool 
 until eleven o'clock and came back to the office 
 with the usual report that Larry had not ar- 
 rived. We ran a column of short local jottings 
 each day under the head of '^Town Talk," and 
 each member of the staff was expected to con- 
 tribute five items. My first for that night was 
 '* Where is Larry Donovan?" 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 175 
 
 Next morning the opposition paper informed 
 the city adequately where Larry Donovan was. 
 He was in the hospital, having arrived in the 
 city the night before and made the jnmp. Any 
 time the city editor sent me upon a special 
 mission after that he wrote down my assign- 
 ment and after it the words, ^^and find Larry 
 Donovan. ' ' 
 
 In about a year and a half things began com- 
 ing my way. I had my salary raised to eighteen 
 dollars a week and was made baseball reporter 
 and dramatic critic. Baseball came in the sum- 
 mer when the theatres were not running, and 
 there was no baseball when the dramatic season 
 was on. My baseball and theatrical stories were 
 popular with the people, but intensely unpopu- 
 lar with the persons who owned the ball club 
 and the playhouses, for I told the truth about 
 both institutions. I became a personage. When 
 my friends came to town I could pass them into 
 the theatres, and I always was good for reserved 
 seats at the ball games. Also I was making 
 some money by corresponding for out-of-town 
 
176 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 papers and I considered that my career in 
 journalism was safely begun. 
 
 Then there came a state convention to the 
 city. I was put in charge of the story. A lot 
 of out-of-town reporters were there and I knew 
 I had to make good, for these stern critics would 
 see my work every morning, while nobody on 
 the ground would see the stories they tele- 
 graphed back until their papers came in by mail, 
 and there would only be a few of these. I had 
 two of the boys to help me and we worked prac- 
 tically all the time. We were doing very well 
 and had even received a word of commendation 
 from the managing editor, until the morning of 
 the day when the nomination for governor was 
 to be made. 
 
 There were two or three candidates. I had 
 my story all written, when a man I knew to be 
 in the confidence of the bosses came in and 
 told me it had been decided to name a certain 
 man. I changed my story, put a paragraph at 
 the head of it giving this news and went to bed. 
 Next morning I came early to the office. I felt 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 177 
 
 pretty good. I was the first man in — ^bnt one. 
 That one was the managing editor. I fonnd 
 him standing in the middle of the local room 
 with a copy of the paper crumpled in his hand, 
 giving an exact imitation of the managing 
 editor who had discharged me a long time 
 before. 
 
 ^^It's all off," I thought; ^^I'm fired." 
 ^^What do you mean by thisf" shouted the 
 managing editor. ^^What do you mean by mak- 
 ing a fool of me in this way! "Why did you 
 print that this man is to be nominated when I 
 know that another one is!" 
 
 I explained. That didn't seem to satisfy him. 
 He was so angry that he sputtered. Then it 
 came out that at a conference of the bosses the 
 night before it had been decided to nominate 
 a certain other man who was considered most 
 available — ^he was beaten, by the way. The 
 managing editor had been at the conference. 
 ''Why didn't you tell me!" I asked. 
 ' ' Get out ! " he yelled. ' ' Get out ! " 
 It all sounded familiar. I wondered if all 
 
 12— Newspaper Man, 
 
178 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 managing editors acted that way. All real ones 
 I had ever known did, anyhow. I left him in 
 the middle of the floor and stood at the bottom 
 of the stairs nntil the boys who were on the 
 story with me came along. I told them the story 
 and said I thought I was discharged. They said 
 they'd qnit if I was. I told them they probably 
 wonld, anyhow, but we made that compact and 
 i^^ent npstairs to see what was coming out of it. 
 
 I went in to the managing editor. 
 
 *^ Chief- — " I began. 
 
 '^What time does the convention open!" he 
 asked — rather irrelevantly, I thought. 
 
 ^^Ten o'clock." 
 
 ^^Well, you'd better be getting over there if 
 you're going to do the story." His eyes 
 twinkled. He certainly was my friend. 
 
 In addition to my baseball and theatrical 
 work, I had been writing, several times a week, 
 half a dozen short stories about funny little 
 things I had seen or heard. These we ran under 
 the headline, ''Side Lights on Life." I noticed, 
 on reading the exchanges to get baseball and 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 179 
 
 theatrical clippings for the Sunday edition, that 
 a paper in a big city to the west of us reprinted 
 a good many of these short stories of mine. ^^If 
 they are good enough to reprint, why wouldn't 
 that editor like them at first hand?" I asked my- 
 self. 
 
 I determined to ask him. So I went up there 
 on my first day off and did ask him. He said 
 he would like to print them first hand if he 
 knew who wrote them. I told him I did. He 
 engaged me to do theatres, hotels, this short 
 stuff and specials and said he would give me 
 twenty-five dollars a week. That was as much 
 as our city editor got. It was wealth beyond 
 the dreams of avarice. I went back, resigned, 
 and in two weeks I was working in the new 
 place. 
 
 The editor who gave me twenty-five dollars 
 a week and an opportunity to do the kind of 
 work I liked is the man to whom I largely owe 
 whatever success I may have had in life. Be- 
 fore I came there I had been allowed to do 
 pretty much as I pleased and my writing had 
 
180 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 not had the benefit of close editing. He was 
 a man who had begun somewhat as I had and 
 had won his way to the top of that big news- 
 paper by sheer ability and hard work. Ap- 
 parently he liked me, and I know I liked him 
 immensely, and I consider him, to this day, one 
 of the best friends I ever had. At any rate, 
 he took me in hand, held me down to brass tacks, 
 was not at all chary in pointing ont my faults — 
 of which I had many — and when I did anything 
 worth while praised that work judicially. 
 
 He was a stylist — ^not a faddist — ^but a writer 
 who believed in clear and simple English and 
 could write it so well that I used often to wonder 
 if I ever could get the grasp of language that 
 he had. He was strong, virile, and could put 
 more in one paragraph than most of the rest 
 of us can get in a column. Moreover, he had 
 a head packed full of information and knew his 
 city as well as I knew the alphabet. Night after 
 night I have seen him stop at the desk where 
 the city directory was kept and read a few 
 pages of names. The result was that as he 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 181 
 
 looked over every proof lie spotted an error 
 instantly, and there was no chance of any mis- 
 statement of fact concerning local affairs get- 
 ting by him. He had a prodigions memory and 
 knew thoroughly all the social, political and 
 business intricacies of the town. He was in- 
 tolerant of stupidity, but had a strong sense of 
 humor and a vivid appreciation of the inter- 
 esting and the human. 
 
 Practically I was working for him, although 
 I was nominally on the city staff and under 
 the city editor. I was anxious to please and to 
 learn. There were two reasons for this : First, 
 I was twenty-two years old and considered it 
 high time for me to get squared away in the 
 work I had chosen for life; and, second and 
 greater, I was married and had serious respon- 
 sibilities. Everybody who knew me said that 
 by marrying when I was not yet twenty-one I 
 had proved that I was the same kind of a 
 sentimental fool that I was when I dashed out 
 and bought a daily paper some years before. 
 But I wasn't. My early marriage steadied me,, 
 
182 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 kept me from doing fool things, made me chary 
 of shifting positions, held me where I was until 
 I had a good insight into my trade and kept 
 me keen at my job. 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 183 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 The city editor didn't warm up to me much: 
 at firsts although we became good friends in 
 later years. I think he had an idea that the 
 managing editor had no business to project 
 an outside man into his staff the way I was put 
 in. Also my salary was within a dollar or two 
 of his, which may have had something to do 
 with it. When they put the linotypes into the 
 old office a year or so before I changed base, 
 we all learned the typewriter, and I brought 
 mine with me to the new place. I was the first 
 reporter in that city to use a machine in pre- 
 paring copy and consequently I was an object 
 of considerable interest to all the staff. Now, 
 of course, nearly all newspaper copy is made 
 on typewriters. The introduction of the lino- 
 type forced that, because the typesetting ma- 
 chines are so much faster than hand composition 
 
184 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 and the printers had to have longer 'Hakes" 
 or sections of copy than they conld handle in 
 manuscript form — decrease in bulk and increase 
 in legibility — in order to work the machines 
 advantageously. 
 
 The paper was a morning paper, and I went 
 to work on a Monday afternoon. My first as- 
 signment was the theatres. That night there 
 was to be a first production of a new play. I 
 have forgotten what the play was, but it was 
 by some well-known dramatist of that day and 
 the production was quite an event. They gave 
 me two seats, which were the regular critics' 
 seats, but I went alone, as I knew nobody in 
 the town save a few of the people I had met 
 in the office and my wife was not with me. A 
 very prosperous and pleasant gentleman sat 
 next to me on the aisle, and with him a beau- 
 tifully gowned and most attractive lady. I 
 knew the paper had four seats for every per- 
 formance and I figured that this man must be 
 somebody important in the organization. 
 
 The man did not go out between the acts, nor 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 185 
 
 did I, and I overheard his conversation about 
 the new play — ^which was not a very good play, 
 by the way. The man had a frank manner of 
 talking and used some very apt comparisons. 
 Also he held the same views about the play 
 that I did. Hence on my way back to the office 
 I reasoned thus : That man undoubtedly is high 
 up in the conduct of my paper. He held very 
 decided views about that play. Those views 
 coincide largely with mine. Where they do not 
 coincide with mine his judgment probably is 
 better than mine. So ITl let him criticize the 
 play, as it is up to me to make good here as 
 rapidly as possible. 
 
 Wherefore, instead of being a critic of that 
 play I became a reporter, mostly, of another 
 man's criticism, for I was terribly anxious to 
 make a good impression with my first work and 
 I considered that the end justified the means. 
 I wrote a column about the play and it was 
 run under a four-line head. Next morning I 
 was early at the office. Soon after the editor 
 came in the man who sat next to me at the ^ 
 
186 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 theatre the night before came in also. Before 
 he reached the editor's room he called out: 
 ^*Who wrote the criticism of that play last 
 night r' 
 
 '* Here's where I either get it or else don't," 
 I thought, and listened eagerly for the editor's 
 reply. He spoke my name and asked, ^'Whyf" 
 
 ^^ Because," said the man, ^^I consider that 
 the best piece of criticism this paper has had 
 for some time." 
 
 Perhaps that wasn^t pleasant to me! Five 
 minutes later I was called in and introduced. 
 The man was the owner and editor-in-chief of 
 the paper. Many times after that I wrote pieces 
 he didn't like, and he was always frank to tell 
 me so; but he was my loyal friend and stood 
 by me during the ^ve years of my association 
 with him, as I hope I stood by him and as I 
 always tried to do. He died a short time ago. 
 He was brave, able, manly — a great editor and 
 a great man. 
 
 Not long afterward, on a dull afternoon, the 
 city editor told me to go out and rustle a fea- 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN" 187 
 
 ture story of some kind. *^ Let's start a cru- 
 sade," he said; ^4t's been a long time since we 
 have jumped on anything for fair. You are 
 new here and probably can see things that are 
 nuisances which we overlook because of their 
 familiarity. Start something." 
 
 I went out and took a look around. The thing 
 that had impressed me most while I had been 
 in the place was the dirtiness of the manufac- 
 turing part of the city, the enormous nuisance 
 of the soft-coal smoke that belched unceasingly 
 from hundreds of chimneys. The city I came 
 from was a hard-coal town. I hadn't walked 
 a block before I decided this was the worthy 
 subject of a crusade. I made a few notes and 
 came back and pounded out three screaming 
 columns about this frightful menace to the 
 health and comfort of our citizens. 
 
 When I handed in my copy the city editor 
 looked at the first page and chuckled. I didn't 
 know why, for the story was not humorous. It 
 was deadly serious. He ran through the copy 
 and chuckled some more. I puzzled over that 
 
188 THE MAKING OE A 
 
 chuckle for a long time. When I looked at the 
 proofs I found that he had put a two-column 
 head on it and it was in the paper the next morn- 
 ing yelping after the smoke nuisance like a pack 
 of hounds after a fox. It looked pretty good 
 and I was reading it when the proprietor came 
 in. He walked over to where I was sitting and 
 said: ^^I suppose you wrote that smoke article 
 this morning!" 
 
 **Yes, sir." 
 
 '^Well, it was a fine article. I imagine you 
 intend to follow it up to-day." 
 
 ^^Yes, sir," I replied, all puffed up. 
 
 He smiled at me in that kindly manner of 
 his and patted me on the shoulder. ^^Well, my 
 boy," he said, *^I wish you would restrain your- 
 self until we get our smoke consumers in. If 
 you had observed carefully you would have seen 
 that at present we are one of the worst smoke 
 offenders in the city." 
 
 That was all he said, but then I knew why 
 the city editor chuckled. 
 
 What a man he was! Three or four years 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 189 
 
 later, when I was in charge of the news of the 
 paper, one of the police reporters brought in 
 a circumstantial story of a counterfeiting gang 
 that had been operating in our vicinity. He 
 had names and dates. This reporter was a 
 most reliable man. I had implicit faith in him. 
 He said the story was all right and I played 
 it up all over the paper. It was exclusive also. 
 Two days later there came a howl from a man 
 in a neighboring city. His name had been used 
 in the story. He threatened a big libel suit, and 
 I found, after investigation, that he had a case. 
 I went to the owner and assumed responsibility. 
 
 *^I'm to blame," I said; ^^I ran the story. 
 The police reporter thought he was all right. 
 What shall I doT' 
 
 *^ Better go up and see what they want," he 
 advised. 
 
 I went to the neighboring city, wrangled for 
 a couple of days with the man's lawyers and 
 finally arranged a settlement for a considerable 
 sum of money. I telegraphed to the owner, he 
 telegraphed the money to me and I got a release. 
 
190 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 Then I went back and handed him my resig- 
 nation. He read it, said ^^ Shucks!" threw it 
 in the waste basket and never spoke of the 
 incident again. 
 
 I was in Canada one day during my first sum- 
 mer on the paper — Canada always furnished 
 trouble for me — when I ran across a big Liberal 
 political ratification. I think it was a Liberal 
 meeting ; maybe it was a Conservative meeting 
 — I have forgotten the exact brand of politics 
 displayed there. At any rate, it was a political 
 ratification meeting. I went down to look the 
 meeting over, not that I was interested in 
 Canadian politics or that my paper was, but I 
 thought that I might get a story. 
 
 I got one, there is no doubt about that. The 
 politics didn't appeal to me in the least, but 
 the whiskers of the men at the meeting did. 
 There were more kinds of whiskers worn at 
 that meeting by the sturdy Canadian yeomanry 
 than I had ever seen gathered together at one 
 time. There were whiskers of every variety 
 and of every color, morasses of them, swamps 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 191 
 
 of them, meadows of them, wood limits of them, 
 acres of them — whiskers, whiskers everywhere, 
 and not a barbershop in sight. There were side- 
 bums, brannigans, knockers, mutton-chops, -f nil 
 beards, chin beards, paint-brushes, goatees, im- 
 perials, Vandykes — every known variety and 
 many that had not before that time been classi- 
 fied. 
 
 So I confined my story to the whiskers, men- 
 tioning incidentally in the last line that the dis- 
 play had been at some kind of a political meet- 
 ing. I took up the whiskers in detail and de- 
 scribed them, apostrophized them, apotheosized 
 them, laughed at them, admired them, stroked 
 them and ruffled them. I was proud of that 
 story, and they ran it in on the first page. A 
 day or two later a Canadian friend of mine, 
 who read a good many Canadian papers in the 
 course of his newspaper work, came in and said : 
 *^Well, you've raised merry hell with that 
 whisker story of yours. ' ' 
 
 ^^ What's happened?'' 
 
 '*0h, nothing," he replied, pulling a bunch 
 
192 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 of newspaper clippings ont of his pocket, *^ noth- 
 ing at all, except that all the Canadian papers 
 of the same political faith as the persons at 
 that meeting are roasting the eternal tar out 
 of yon for insulting and villifying their intel- 
 ligent voters, and all the opposition papers are 
 quoting it and calling attention to the kind of 
 rubes that make up that constituency/' 
 
 He was right. For three weeks he filed clit)- 
 pings from Canadian papers and border papers 
 with me, and the things they said about me were 
 not fit for polite reading. The letter-writing 
 brigade — always strong in Canada — got under 
 way, and it seemed to me that I had insulted 
 the Queen or done some other terrible thing. 
 My editor thought it was a joke, and so it was, 
 but it reacted. I have all the clippings pasted 
 in a book, with the original article leading. The 
 title of the book is Notes on Whiskers. Any 
 time I want to say anything mean about a per- 
 son I can find inspiration and language in that 
 book. 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 193 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 For the first year my editor disciplined me 
 pretty thoroughly. He clubbed a lot of writing 
 defects out of me, curbed a lot of foolish en- 
 thusiasm, encouraged any good idea I had, let 
 me go to the limit when I was right and held 
 me sternly in check when I was at a tangent. 
 He took me over on the editorial page, where I 
 was directly under his eye, gave me a paragraph 
 department to do and smoothed me out to a 
 great extent. Then when I was beginning to 
 have an inkling of my business he turned over 
 the news end of the paper to me. It was a 
 departure, for before that time the city editor 
 had been supreme in the local end and the tele- 
 graph editor in his department. I was made 
 responsible for both ends. 
 
 Naturally I was full of ideas. I tried on a 
 good many of them. The editor was tolerant 
 
 13 — Newspaper Man. 
 
194 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 and let me have full swing, and I soon found 
 what would work and what would not. Then 
 the city editor went on the Sunday paper and 
 I took the actual city desk and also kept my 
 supervision of the other news department. I 
 put in a copyreader, the first we had had, and 
 right there I began to grow a little. Also I 
 had had my salary raised several times and was 
 getting along comfortably. 
 
 There was one good way of making outside 
 money — to get an appointment as a local cor- 
 respondent for a New York or Chicago or Phila- 
 delphia paper. New York papers were best. 
 The rivalry for these places was keen among 
 the reporters in the city. Usually when a cor- 
 respondent for a New York or Chicago paper 
 left our town or quit for some reason his recom- 
 mendation was sufficient to insure the appoint- 
 ment of a new man in that field. Hence, though 
 the managing editors in New York and Chi- 
 cago didn't know it, there was a cash value to 
 the jobs aside from the money that could be 
 made from month to month. They were legit- 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 195 
 
 imate articles of barter. A big paper, that bad 
 a liberal news policy and wonld take a fair pro- 
 portion of tbe news offered, was worth a good- 
 sized sum of money as a business proposition. 
 The first one I secured was the New York 
 paper for which I worked for a good many 
 years later in hfe. The man who had the job 
 was leaving town and, on consideration of 
 seventy-five dollars in hand paid, recommended 
 me as the person best fitted to succeed him, and 
 I was appointed. Some weeks when news of 
 that section was lively I made as high as fifteen 
 or twenty dollars in addition to my salary. It 
 was a very poor week, indeed, when I could not 
 get in ^Ye * dollars ' worth of stuff. Also I 
 learned there the trick of making alluring 
 *' queries." No outside paper, except in the 
 case of most important and late stories, allowed 
 its correspondent to send in the news without 
 first telegraphing to the office, stating briefly 
 what the story was and how many words in the 
 judgment of the correspondent it was worth. 
 These queries were numbered and read like 
 
196 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 this: ^^Big fire in factory; fourteen killed; 
 300"; or ^^Sensational shooting on fashionable 
 street; well-known people involved ; 750"; and 
 the news editor at the other end of the wire 
 would order as many or as few words as he 
 wanted. Naturally no story was underplayed 
 in these bulletins. It was not long before I 
 found out what kind of news the outside papers 
 preferred, and I scheduled that kind insistently 
 whenever there was even a remote chance of 
 getting any space. As a result of the expansion 
 and perfection of the service of the press asso- 
 ciations the correspondence item probably is 
 not so important to-day as it was in those days. 
 Then we made a good deal of easy money out 
 of it. Besides, when there was a local story 
 big enough to warrant sending a staff man 
 after it from the outside offices we got pay for 
 helping him. 
 
 My editor had been liberal with me and had 
 allowed me to hire good men. I was making 
 about fifty dollars a week when I worked seven 
 days, and I had two men on the local staff who 
 
NEW^PAPEE MAN 197 
 
 were getting twenty-five dollars each and one 
 who was getting thirty. This man drifted in 
 one day and asked for a place. I gave him a 
 try-out, and hired him. He was the best re- 
 porter I ever knew, bar none, and I have known 
 all the good ones in the past twenty-five years. 
 These salaries were large for the town. There 
 never had been anything like it before, nor had 
 there ever been a local staff like that before in 
 that town. It was a compact, reliable and at 
 times brilliant news-gathering machine, and we 
 put out a paper that was excellent in every 
 way. Those were good days. 
 
 From a reportorial viewpoint every city 
 editor is the meanest man on earth. He has to 
 be. His job requires it. It is a natural and 
 inherent reportorial tendency to think one's 
 particular work the most important on the 
 paper, to want all the big stories, to protest 
 violently when his stuff is cut or not handled 
 properly — as he thinks — and constantly to howl 
 about the smallness of his wage. He holds the 
 city editor personally responsible for all these 
 
198 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 things. On the other hand, the city editor is 
 held responsible by the editor for the expense 
 of his department and for the thoroughness of 
 the work of his staff ; and inasmuch as reporters 
 are not especially amenable to discipline, he 
 must be rigid and unyielding or he will soon 
 find himself in trouble with the man in the in- 
 side office. 
 
 I don't suppose I was the pleasantest city 
 editor on earth. I was quick-tempered, arbi- 
 trary, inclined to be sarcastic over a failure, 
 and I made the men work hard and long; but 
 I got along fairly well for all that. I think the 
 staff liked me; at any rate I liked the sta:ff. 
 The editor gave me practically a free hand. 
 I could hire and discharge almost at will, and 
 did. Every now and then even to this day I 
 hear things about myself from men I discharged 
 for lapses of discipline or failure or lack of 
 ability. Still that part of it is but a feature 
 of the game. I don't blame thera. 
 
 Once in a while I wrote a story myself, and 
 I wrote many introductions to big stories. I had 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 199 
 
 a good newspaper style and could see the salient 
 point of a story and bring it out vividly and 
 concisely. Also I had a fair sense of hnmor and 
 kept the paper lively. I was a stern young per- 
 son and believed that everything that happened 
 should be printed. One night at midnight the 
 head of the police department decided on a gen- 
 eral raid of all the questionable resorts in the 
 city. He made a thorough job of it, apparently 
 for the purpose of satisfying himself just how 
 far he could go. He evidently thought over 
 the matter and concluded that at that time of 
 night, with none of the courts working and with 
 the mayor asleep, he was the czar and he started 
 out to prove it. The result was that in an hour 
 he had three or four precinct station houses 
 packed with an assortment of people that 
 ranged from the highest to the lowest. In news- 
 paper parlance we '^ate that story up." I 
 spread it all over the first page of the paper 
 with a three-column head. It so happened that 
 Dean Hole, the English clergyman, was lectur- 
 ing in the city that night. In the book he sub- 
 
200 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 sequently wrote giving his impressions of 
 America lie reprinted that headline and cited 
 it as a horrible example of the American news- 
 paper tendency to sensationalism, virtuously 
 reflecting that no English newspaper would have 
 done such a thing. Which probably is the 
 truth, but we did it, and that story was a wonder 
 and stood that town on its head. 
 
 This tendency to print all the news got me 
 into hot water several times, for I refused to 
 suppress news that the friends of the owner 
 wanted suppressed just as impartially as I de- 
 lighted in printing news his enemies didn't want 
 printed. He stood by me, too, and so did my 
 editor: only one day, when I had done some 
 particularly obnoxious thing to a friend of the 
 owner's, the owner came in and asked pathetic- 
 ally, ^* Great Scott, aren't you going to leave 
 me any friends at all ! ' ' That paper was abso- 
 lutely independent. It had no political affili- 
 ations save the broad support of the better prin- 
 ciples of the Eepublican party, and this left 
 the editor and myself — subordinate to him — in 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 201 
 
 clover, especially as the business office couldn't 
 interfere either. Whenever there was a local 
 candidate for office whom we didn't like we 
 said so, not taking any pains to be pleasant 
 about it either. There were no strings on us, 
 and we had a lot of fun and got a good many 
 results. 
 
202 THE MAKING OF. A 
 
 CHAPTEE XXin 
 
 Ours was a big city and yet a small one. 
 Local politics were as intense as in a village; 
 local jealousies interfered with many plans for 
 improvement; local enterprise was at times 
 flamboyant and at times dead. There was one 
 central gathering place — the big hotel — and at 
 luncheon time almost everybody of importance 
 could be found there. Here politics was planned 
 and business was discussed. Also at five o 'clock 
 in the afternoon the leaders in the various 
 phases of the city's life generally dropped in. 
 It was like the store in the village. Everybody 
 knew everybody else, for when you got down 
 to it the big outside population did not count 
 much in affairs. The town was a good news 
 town. It was a big railroad centre, a big manu- 
 facturing place and held a most important com- 
 mercial position. Always something was stir- 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 203 
 
 ring, and in our paper we made the most of 
 what there was. 
 
 It was a great five years for me. Along in 
 my fourth year on the paper the owner and the 
 editor gave me the title of managing editor. 
 I thought I had arrived. The first sheet of office 
 letter paper I had with my name on it as man- 
 aging editor I used for a letter to my father, 
 calling his attention to his gloomy predictions 
 of some years before and asking him to observe 
 what had happened. His observations in an- 
 swer were pertinent, I may say, and admonitory. 
 They consisted of a short communication in 
 which he dwelt on the dangers of getting a 
 swelled head, pointing out a few symptoms in 
 my own case. 
 
 Once, before I left the old town I had been 
 offered a political job there. I was told that 
 I could be deputy county clerk if I wanted to, 
 and that the salary would be two thousand dol- 
 lars a year. I was getting less than a thousand 
 dollars a year at the time and I was sorely 
 tempted, but I had sense enough to decline. I 
 
204 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 had seen many other newspaper men leave 
 newspaper work for political places, secretary- 
 ships and the like, or to go into business, but 
 I had concluded if I had any future at all it 
 was in newspaper work. Only one other temp- 
 tation to get out of this line of work came to 
 me, although like all of my kind I was con- 
 stantly talking in those days of the grind and 
 the lack of future and similar rot. I had made 
 many friends among the managers and advance 
 agents of the theatrical business while at dra- 
 matic work, and one of these managers told 
 me that if I wanted it I could have a place at 
 seventy-five dollars a week as advance agent 
 for a good star. I went down to New York — 
 it was my first visit to New York, by the 
 way — looked things over and didn't accept. 
 That was the second time in my life I showed 
 ordinary common sense. 
 
 New York is the Mecca of all newspaper men 
 working elsewhere. Park Bow is the candle in 
 which many country reportorial moths singe 
 their wings. There were times when I wanted 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 205 
 
 to go to New York right away and I made one 
 or two efforts to do so, for I was ambitions. 
 I had many friends among New York news- 
 paper men, all of whom urged me to get into 
 the game down there, but I stuck and I am glad 
 I did. When I did get to New York I was pretty 
 well equipped for the grueling work there. 
 
 Finally what I thought was a big opportunity 
 came to me. A local rich man who had mixed 
 in politics and wanted to mix more bought an 
 afternoon newspaper. He spread himself on 
 hiring men at fancy — for us — salaries, im- 
 ported an editor and went at the job of securing 
 power for himself through the medium of the 
 newspaper business. A year or so later he 
 started a morning paper and then bought the 
 other morning paper — ^not ours — and combined 
 it with his own. He had approached me several 
 times with offers of positions, but I had not 
 been responsive. 
 
 Almost on the very day my five years ended 
 he made me a proposition that caught me. He 
 offered me the position of editor of his after- 
 
206 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 noon paper at four thousand dollars a year. 
 This was much more money than I was getting. 
 It was more money than any newspaper man 
 in the city was getting, with the exception of 
 one or two. Besides, since I was eighteen I had 
 been working practically aU the time on morn- 
 ing newspapers and sleeping in the daytime, 
 and I thought it would be great to have my 
 evenings to myself. My wife coincided with this 
 view. Except on days off I was only in the 
 house to eat and sleep. 
 
 I saw my owner and my editor. They said 
 they couldn 't meet the raise, so I took the other 
 place. ^^111 have to have a contract for two 
 years, '^ I said to my new employer. 
 
 ''All right," he replied; ''have one drawn 
 up.'' 
 
 I went to a lawyer and he drew up a contract 
 for me. It was iron-clad so far as I was con- 
 cerned. My new employer signed it without 
 reading it. He was as anxious to get me then 
 as he was later to get rid of me. That contract 
 proved a mighty good thing for me later on. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 207 
 
 I hired some of the best men in the city and 
 we started in. We made a good paper. I 
 think all who read it will admit that, bnt it was 
 not a successful paper. Another afternoon 
 paper had the biggest circulation in the town 
 and still another had the Democratic circulation. 
 Of the four afternoon publications ours re- 
 mained consistently third in spite of everything 
 I or my men could do — and we worked like 
 slaves. As a result before the end of my first 
 year the owner and I were at loggerheads. 
 
 We were constantly embroiled with the other 
 newspapers and always on the losing side in 
 politics. I kept my staff together as best I 
 could, but the owner was constantly growling 
 about the expense. Besides, there was great 
 friction between the staffs of the morning and 
 the afternoon papers, and I wished a hundred 
 times I had not left my old place. I was very 
 unhappy, but I was under contract. I cursed 
 that contract in those days as much as I blessed 
 it later. 
 
 Things went from bad to worse. The mom- 
 
208 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 ing paper was getting circulation and we were 
 standing still. I had a fight on with the morn- 
 ing paper, with the business office, with the pro- 
 prietor and with everybody else. I tried to pull 
 the paper out, but I couldn't budge it. I was 
 the first man down in the morning and the last 
 to leave at night. We tried guessing contests 
 and many other forms of allurement, but there 
 was no change — our circulation was stationary. 
 
 The owner had the merit of being frank in his 
 displeasure. He told me what he thought. I 
 told him what I thought also. One day he sent 
 for me to come over to his office. I went and 
 found him at his desk, glowering at a circulation 
 statement. 
 
 '*You ain't doin' much," he exploded. 
 
 '^Not much," I admitted. 
 
 '^Well, I got to have a change round here. 
 Fire those men an' come back an' tell me youVe 
 done it." 
 
 He handed me a list containing the names of 
 nine men on my statf. The list included all my 
 friends on the paper and all my best men. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 209 
 
 **AU right," I said, and walked out. I went. 
 over to the editorial rooms, called the men in 
 in a bmich and gave them a week's notice. 
 ^^You are all discharged," I said — '^orders of 
 the boss." 
 
 ^^Have you fired 'em?" he asked when I re- 
 turned. 
 
 ^^Yes." 
 
 **I suppose," he said, ^^you won't be very 
 comfortable around here now all your pals are 
 gone. ' ' 
 
 ^^ Not very." 
 
 ^^Well, hadn't you better quit?" 
 
 I laughed at him. ^'I would," I said, '^if I 
 could. My sense of moral obligation to you 
 will not allow me to. Besides, I would be sure 
 to get into legal difficulties. Duty calls me and 
 I must obey. I shall serve out my term." 
 
 ^'What do you mean?" he growled. 
 
 ^^Why, had you forgotten my contract? That 
 binds me. I cannot evade the responsibilities 
 of that instrument. I must remain, painful as. 
 it is to me and to you." 
 
 / 4 — Newspaper Man. 
 
210 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 He scowled. ^^Let me see that contract," lie 
 demanded. 
 
 *' You've got a copy," I retorted; '4ook at 
 yonr own. I'll quit when you pay me the full 
 remaining face value of that contract and not 
 before. ' ' 
 
 He sent for the contract and his lawyer. It 
 was the first time either of them had read that 
 document. My lawyer friend had done his work 
 well. There was fifteen hundred dollars due, 
 but we compromised on twelve hundred dollars. 
 The next morning I walked out of the place with 
 twelve one-hundred-dollar bills in my pocket, 
 and I never went back. I never blamed him for 
 getting rid of me. I could not make his paper 
 go, nor has anybody else been able to; but I 
 have always blamed him for throwing out the 
 others. They were doing good work and the 
 fault was not theirs. However, all of them were 
 soon provided for, and that, I suppose, was his 
 way. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 211 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 There was nothing left for me in that city. 
 I went fishing for a time and then went to New 
 York. I thought I was ripe for work down 
 there. However, nobody else thought so to any 
 great extent. One Park Eow paper offered me 
 a job at twenty-five dollars a week, but I 
 wouldn't take that, and another managing 
 editor held out hopes for several weeks and 
 then refused to give me a chance. Still I had 
 plenty of money and plenty of good friends in 
 the business and I knew it was only a matter 
 of time. 
 
 Some of my friends put me in with one of 
 the state committees to help in the literary 
 bureau, and I wrote miles and miles of campaign 
 stuff commending the hero of San Juan Hill, 
 Colonel Roosevelt, who was then running for 
 governor of the state. The Colonel squeaked 
 
212 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 through, and my job squeaked out at the iden- 
 tical moment he squeaked in. 
 
 Meantime I noticed that a certain magazine 
 was running a series of articles called Great 
 Business Organizations and was detailing the 
 methods of some of the larger corporations. I 
 had been observant while I was working with 
 the committee and had learned a great deal 
 about the business of running a state campaign. 
 It was a business, too, not a haphazard venture, 
 and it had that great business man and poli- 
 tician, Benjamin B. Odell, Junior, at the head 
 of it. So I wrote for that series an article de- 
 scribing the business end of a state campaign, 
 and I submitted it to the magazine. 
 
 A few days after the election I was taken on 
 the local staff of one of the New York papers. 
 It was one of the smaller papers. I had measly 
 assignments and made forty-one dollars in ten 
 days. On the tenth day I received a letter from 
 the editor of the magazine to which I had sent 
 my article, inclosing a check for fifty dollars 
 and an invitation to come and see him. I went. 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 213 
 
 We had a talk. He hired me to work for a news- 
 paper syndicate he had bought and for his 
 magazine. I went back to the newspaper office 
 and quit. They didn't seem to mind. 
 
 I stayed with the magazine for nearly two 
 years, getting a good general idea of the busi- 
 ness, for I worked in the advertising depart- 
 ment, the circulation department and, later, on 
 the editorial side, where in a few months I be- 
 came managing editor. I didn't get much salary 
 at the start, but I was advanced rapidly and had 
 a chance to do some writing. I had decided to 
 stick to writing. I had had all the desk work 
 I needed, for though I felt I had been successful 
 on the first paper where I had an executive 
 desk, I knew I had failed on the second. Be- 
 sides I had figured out there was more money 
 in writing — ^if one could write — than in the 
 executive work. I thought I could write. 
 
 One afternoon — it was a holiday, Lincoln's 
 Birthday, I think — I was coming downtown on 
 the elevated road and happened on two friends 
 who were on newspapers in the city. They had 
 
214 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 a day off, too, and we spent our liberty together. 
 Along about six o'clock one of them said: 
 ^^ There is a big Chinese banqnet down in Mott 
 Street to-night. I've got several tickets in my 
 desk. Let's get them and look it over." 
 
 We went. I was given a seat at the table next 
 to a big, fine-looking man whom I had met be- 
 fore. He didn't remember it, but I did. He 
 was the man who had so emphatically refused 
 to give me a place in Chicago some years back. 
 I didn't mention that, but talked the best I 
 knew how to my editorial friend. He was then 
 editorial director of the biggest New York 
 paper. The New York grind killed him, but 
 what a whale of an editor he was ! One of the 
 friends who went to the banquet with me had 
 been urging me to get back into the game. I 
 had already decided to do so some time before, 
 because stuck away as I was in the editorial 
 rooms of a magazine I missed the grip of active 
 newspaper work. 
 
 The editorial director and I went uptown 
 together. We talked a lot. I told him about 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 215 
 
 myself and that I should like to get back into 
 the game. Also my newspaper friends put in 
 a few good words. Next day I got a telegram 
 from him. It said: *^I have been wondering 
 since I talked with you last night if there is not 
 some work on our paper you would like to take 
 up. What do you think"?" 
 
 I thought there was. I went down to see him 
 and he hired me to go to Washington to run the 
 Washington bureau for that paper. He gave 
 me a good, big salary, which increased as the 
 years went on. I was then thirty-two years 
 old and I again felt I had arrived. That time 
 it was true. 
 
216 THE MAKING OP A 
 
 CHAPTEE XXV 
 
 One of the rights guaranteed under the Con- 
 stitution is that every American shall have full 
 privilege to think and say his own particular 
 business is a poor business and that he would 
 have made a much greater success in any other 
 line of endeavor. Newspaper men exercise this 
 right unreservedly. There never is a gathering 
 of reporters or editors that the talk does not 
 eventually shift round to the lack of reward, 
 the hopelessness as to future, and the general 
 worthlessness of newspaper work as a career. 
 Usually, too, the youngsters are the loudest in 
 condemnation. After a boy has been a reporter 
 for a year he thinks he knows all there is to 
 know about his work, and maybe he does. At 
 any rate he tells you what a barren field journal- 
 ism is, that it gets a man nowhere, and that for 
 the brains and service required a man in any 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 217 
 
 other profession wonld make much more money 
 and much more reputation. Men older in the 
 business talk about the same. 
 
 Now I do not contend a man can get rich or 
 even well-to-do in newspaper work except as 
 an owner; but I do contend that if a man has 
 an aptness for the business and will take the 
 time to learn it, he can do about as well as if 
 he went into any of the other professions — and 
 have a thousand times more fun. At the start 
 he can do better than he could do in law or 
 medicine or usually in commercial business. The 
 great difficulty with the newspaper business is 
 that experience counts for little or nothing. An 
 experienced doctor or an experienced lawyer 
 or an experienced banker gets better fees and 
 is held in higher regard because of his experi- 
 ence. After a certain stage, experience in news- 
 paper work counts for nothing. The great as- 
 sets are youth and legs. 
 
 One often wonders what becomes of the old 
 men in newspaper work. You will find them 
 stuck away at copy desks, or reading exchanges, 
 
218 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 editing routine departments or writing editorial 
 articles. If you look round the press desks at 
 a National Convention, for example, where 
 every newspaper has its best men, you will see 
 the gray heads are largely outnumbered by the 
 young men — ^men about thirty — ^who in addition 
 to knowing as much about their business as the 
 older ones, have the stamina to do the tremen- 
 dously hard work. 
 
 Granting all this, I still hold that if a young 
 man has an aptitude for newspaper work and 
 will learn his trade, there is no better career 
 in this country or any other than newspaper 
 work. In making this claim I do not arrogate 
 to myself any special qualifications as a judge 
 except these : I was actively in daily newspaper 
 work from the time I was eighteen until I was 
 thirty-nine. I left daily work then because I 
 found a broader field for my writing, a field 
 where I could utilize my experience and such 
 knowledge of men and affairs as I had gained 
 in those twenty-one years. I still consider my- 
 self just as much of a newspaper man as I ever 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 219 
 
 was, and entitled to my opinion. My work has 
 covered everything, from a comitry weekly to 
 the biggest assignments on the biggest news- 
 paper in the United States, which means the 
 biggest in the world. I have played the whole 
 string, and have some thoughts on the subject. 
 A young man starts in newspaper work as a 
 reporter. That is his apprenticeship. In rare 
 cases a man may start as an editorial writer or 
 as a specialist, but unless he has been a reporter 
 and has learned that end of the work he never 
 amounts to very much. The work of the re- 
 porters is the heart's blood of the newspaper. 
 They bring in the news. What they find out and 
 write is what the editorial writer must base his 
 comments on, and woe be to the editorial writer 
 who does not keep in touch with the news staff. 
 He gets to be an academic prig, who invariably 
 forms his own opinions from the editorials he 
 reads in his favorite papers. Eeal editorial 
 writers never are anything but real reporters, 
 with the privilege of commenting instead of re- 
 citing. The old-fashioned commentator, who 
 
220 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 shut himself up in a coop and spun out theories, 
 is rapidly passing away. He has been lost in 
 the shuffle. 
 
 In the newest and most advanced newspaper 
 building in this country, not long completed, 
 there isn't a coop or a cavern or a private room 
 on the editorial floor. Every man who has to 
 do with the editorial end of that paper, from 
 the humblest reporter to the imposing editor- 
 in-chief, sits on one floor, out in the open, each 
 man in touch with every other man. Why! 
 Because the reporters who bring in and write 
 the news are the mainspring of the paper. Be- 
 cause it is essential that every man on that paper 
 shall be in close communication with the scouts 
 who are finding out what that big town is doing 
 and what the world is doing — for the telegraph 
 news is all furnished by reporters also — in order 
 to construct an intelligent and forceful paper 
 that shall contain an adequate presentation of 
 what is happening in the world, adequately com- 
 mented upon, displayed and handled. 
 
 No managing editor or city editor or editor- 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 221 
 
 in-chief of a daily newspaper ever amounted to 
 more than a pedantic whoop who was not at the 
 start a good reporter. There are plenty of 
 them, of course, who never were good reporters, 
 bnt they are not good editors either. They are 
 imitations of the real thing. Go into any big 
 newspaper office in this country and yon will 
 find that the big men in charge served their 
 grueling apprenticeship on the local staff, and 
 usually on the local staff of some paper or 
 papers in much smaller cities than they are 
 working in now. The reporter is the foundation 
 of the game. He is the arch and keystone 
 and the pillars. An editor may be the most bril- 
 liant of persons, but he is a dub unless he has 
 a staff to report for him and to him, both locally 
 and by wire. 
 
 Wherefore, let us look a little mto this ques- 
 tion of good reporters. There are two broad 
 classes: The good reporter who can get the 
 news but cannot write it except in an ordinary 
 way and the good reporter who can get the news 
 and write it in an extraordinary way. I have 
 
222 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 heard legends of good reporters with wonderful 
 noses for news who could bring in stories but 
 could not put them up in decent shape. Every 
 town and every office has had or has now one 
 or two of these rough diamonds. Although I 
 do not want to disparage them any, the reporter 
 who gets anywhere is the chap who not only 
 can find the news, but, having found it, can write 
 it. You will discover that the good reporters 
 who are valuable as news men only are the 
 boys who are and have been for years lingering 
 round at forty and fifty and sixty dollars a week, 
 while the writing chap collects the big space 
 biUs. 
 
 Writing is just as much of a trade as laying 
 bricks or putting in plumbing. Of course now 
 and then a genius flashes who writes intuitively, 
 but most of the men who are getting the money 
 for writing in this country are men who have 
 learned to write, just as a bricklayer learned 
 to lay bricks. Getting the money may be an 
 inartistic and, perhaps, a crass way of identify- 
 ing the end and aim of writing, but there are 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 223 
 
 very few people in this country who write for 
 any other real reason. They say they do, but 
 they do not. The boys with the messages to 
 deliver may be sincere about their messages, 
 but they are also concerned about the checks. 
 
 The only way to learn to write is to write. 
 You cannot get it out of books or by ary other 
 method than by grinding it out, and right here 
 is where the newspaper owners and editors of 
 this country do most to injure themselves and a 
 good many of their men. It is almost the uni- 
 versal custom, especially in the smaller offices 
 where the good reporters come from, to grab 
 a youngster who shows ability and aptitude and 
 has the earmarks of good writing on him, and 
 make some kind of a desk man of him. Thus 
 you will find that the bright boy, who if he were 
 kept at it and properly encouraged would de- 
 velop into a star writer, is made a city editor 
 or an assistant city editor or some thing of the 
 kind and given an executive position as a re- 
 ward of merit. Usually he is glad to take it, 
 for it means more salary. That knocks the 
 
224 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 writing out of him. He is too busy to write, 
 and a man who would have made a good re- 
 porter is turned into a mediocre desk man. 
 
 Desk men are all right in their way — ^the 
 papers have to have them. But the man who 
 has it in him to make a good reporter rarely 
 makes much of an executive. Such work re- 
 quires a different kind of brains. The great 
 geniuses in the newspaper business are the men 
 who have both kinds of brains. They are not 
 so common. Still, if you go over the country 
 and pick out the great executives, the big man- 
 aging editors, you will find that every last one 
 of them at some time was a reporter, and a good 
 one. Conversely, there are on editorial desks 
 in this country scores of men who would have 
 been good reporters and would have developed 
 into excellent writing men, who are giving out 
 assignments and running papers and only mak- 
 ing an ordinary fist at it. 
 
 I recognize the great worth of the capable 
 city editor, and managing editor, and news 
 editor. I admit that the good reporter would be 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 225 
 
 wortliless witliout him to handle the copy, to fit 
 it in, to realize its value or lack of value. The 
 good editor complements the good reporter. 
 One is essential to the other. What I do think 
 is that for the man who has no capital but his 
 brains the better end of the newspaper busi- 
 ness is the writing end, not the executive end. 
 Passing by all the rewards that may come to 
 the executive, to the great editor, I still hold 
 that for a career, for a satisfactory and satis- 
 fying business, the writer has the better of it 
 when you take a large view of the situation. 
 
 By the ^^ better end'' of the business I mean 
 that the writer who is as good as a writer as 
 the executive is as an executive, or compara- 
 tively so, can get almost as much money and 
 can be much happier; have a much wider ex- 
 perience, have a heap more fun, live a more 
 pleasant life, know more people, see more 
 things, get more reputation and beat him a 
 dozen other ways. The mistake the young re- 
 porter makes is in trying to get a desk for the 
 vain privilege of having a title, some evanes- 
 
 / S — Newspaper Man. 
 
226 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 cent authority and a few more dollars a week 
 at the start, and I made that mistake myself. 
 That is the reporter's usual ambition. The 
 young man thinks he is getting on when he is 
 made assistant city editor, or city editor, or 
 dramatic editor, or some other kind of an 
 editor; whereas, if he is a writer, if he has it 
 in him to learn to write, he is really going back- 
 ward instead of forward. 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 227 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVI 
 
 Newspaper work is divided into two parts: 
 the writing end and the executive end — that is, 
 of course, on the editorial side. Many editorial 
 desks in this country are cluttered up with men 
 who should be writers and many men are try- 
 ing to write who should be executives. The 
 difficulty is to sort them out. The place where 
 so many young reporters fail is in not trying 
 to learn to write, but grabbing a desk when the 
 chance comes to them and trying to make other 
 men write. Learning to write is hard work. 
 It takes years to perfect the good writing me- 
 chanic. I do not care how much imagination, 
 how much facility of expression, how many ideas 
 a man may have, he wastes seventy-five per 
 cent, of his effectiveness unless he has learned 
 his trade. After he has learned it is when his 
 imagination, his facility of expression, his 
 
228 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 knowledge of words, his assortment of ideas 
 come in, and make him not only a good writer 
 but a great writer. 
 
 There are hundreds of men writing for news- 
 papers in this country who are not writing so 
 well as they might. Indeed, it is held by many 
 critics that our newspaper writing is not so 
 good as it was. That may or may not be true, 
 but if it is true it is because the men who are 
 in the direction of the newspapers haven't it 
 in them to teach these undeveloped writers their 
 business. Besides, the newspapers of this coun- 
 try are in a way becoming standardized. There 
 isn't so much individuality as there used to be. 
 This is due to a multiplicity of causes, but chiefly 
 to the perfection of the news-gathering facilities 
 and resources and methods of the great press 
 associations that are the backbone of the news- 
 paper. Last fall, as I was coming across Wis- 
 consin, I was told of a place up in the woods 
 where an outlaw was fighting for a dam he had 
 built and was holding up a big posse. It was 
 a big, human-interest story. It is quite likely 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 229 
 
 that ten years ago I should have been sent on 
 that story, and if I had been, I could have called, 
 within one or two, the names of the men from 
 other papers I should have met there. I asked 
 who was up there, and was told the Chicago 
 papers had sent up a man apiece and that the 
 other papers were relying on the press asso- 
 ciations. 
 
 This may be an argument against newspaper 
 work as a career. I don't think it is, but it may 
 be. In spite of standardizing the papers, in 
 spite of the fact that the big newspapers of this 
 country are coming to be more and more in- 
 tensely local and somewhat provincial, I still 
 think there is no better career in this country 
 for a young man who has an aptitude for it 
 than newspaper work. If you can do big work 
 you will get big work to do. 
 
 To get back to the executive end of newspaper 
 work. On the larger papers all the big salaries, 
 or most of them, are paid to the men who direct 
 the papers. The chaps with the executive brains 
 draw down the money. Notwithstanding tnat. 
 
230 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 the writing man can beat them — and the real 
 writing man does. He may not get so much 
 money on the newspaper as the managing editor 
 does, bnt he has a hundred times the oppor- 
 tunity. Think of what it means! If yon de- 
 velop yourself on a newspaper to be a good 
 writer, if you get the reputation, as you surely 
 will, you have the world by the tail, for it isn't 
 necessary to remain with a newspaper. The 
 whole field of literature is yours. You have 
 learned your trade. You can go out and do 
 what you please, where you please, and there 
 will be no lack of a market. But if you are a 
 managing editor and have not developed the 
 writing side, you must remain a managing editor 
 Tintil, in the inevitable course of events in a 
 newspaper office, you are shoved back by the 
 advent of some younger man with newer ideas 
 and more vim than you have, and there is the 
 beginning of the end. I can point out to you 
 in this country scores of men who once held 
 high editorial positions and are now in minor 
 ones; but show me the writing man who is in 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 231 
 
 health who, having reached as high a place as 
 a writer as these men did as executives, has 
 suffered such reverses — not because of old age 
 or infirmity, but because he has lost his market. 
 
 I am not speaking about geniuses. There* 
 have been only a few literary geniuses in this 
 country and they are all dead. I mean good, 
 skillful workmen. Why is it that in periodical 
 literature, for example, the same names are con- 
 stantly recurring in the tables of contents 1 Not 
 because of office favoritism, as many amateurs 
 hold, but because these are men who have 
 learned their business. They know how to write. 
 They can take an idea and make out of it the 
 kind of a story the editor wants. It is the same 
 in architecture, in medicine, in the law, in any 
 other line of endeavor. The men who do the 
 big work are the men who know how to do it. 
 They had talent to begin with, of course ; but 
 they developed that talent by hard work and 
 painstaking application of it. 
 
 One reason why the newspaper business is 
 not a good business, seemingly, is because so 
 
232 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 many men and women go into it as a makeshift 
 and because so many persons who have failed 
 elsewhere adopt it, or have it adopt them, be- 
 cause *4t is so easy to write/' It certainly has 
 allurements at the start. A bright, capable 
 young fellow who can see things and tell about 
 them can, in a few years, so far as reportorial 
 worth goes, be as valuable to the paper as the 
 much older man who has spent years in the serv- 
 ice. Moreover, he can earn more money — at 
 the start, mind you — than his colleague who 
 studied law or medicine, or went into a bank or 
 into a clerkship, or anything like that. It 
 doesn't take long for a bright young cha^p in 
 any kind of a city at all to earn twenty or 
 twenty-five dollars a week. He can do it in a 
 year or two, no matter how penurious his owner 
 or editor may be, or get it somewhere else. How 
 many young lawyers or young doctors can earn 
 a thousand or twelve hundred dollars in the first 
 year or two of their practice! Not one half of 
 one per cent, of all those who start. 
 
 The difficulty is that the advancement, at first 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 233 
 
 so rapid, gets painfully slow, and after a cer- 
 tain point is reached experience counts for noth- 
 ing. That is what makes the average reporter 
 think and say that his business is no good. The 
 trouble isn^t with the business, it is with him. 
 If he was good enough to make a flying start 
 and go along rapidly he is good enough to go 
 as far as he likes if he will take the trouble 
 to learn. Not many of them do. They are 
 content with the first results, and fall into the 
 rut that sooner or later will lead them to the 
 exchange table or, if they get out, to the political 
 job, the private secretaryship, the press agent ^s 
 plac€, or to some other similar line of work. 
 They yelp about the lack of reward in the busi- 
 ness and do not try to develop their own 
 capacities. 
 
 I am not saying that every man or that even 
 one tenth of the men going into newspaper work 
 can learn to write well, but I am saying that 
 not one tenth of the men who do go into it with 
 that latent talent do so develop themselves. 
 ** Sufficient unto the day" is the motto that is 
 
234 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 the curse of the young reporter. He is getting 
 along swimmingly. He has good work and good 
 pay. He does not progress. At the end of his 
 fifth year he is not writing much better than 
 he was at the end of his first year, when some 
 of the knobs had been knocked off him by his 
 editors and copy-readers. He spends his time 
 sitting round and deploring his lack of oppor- 
 tunity in his calling, instead of making a few 
 opportunities for himself. 
 
 The life tends to that. A reporter, by the 
 necessities of his business, is constantly thrown 
 in contact with the big men of his city. Un- 
 consciously he arrogates to himself the habits 
 of mind and, perhaps, the habits of living of 
 those men. He considers himself as good as 
 they are — and usually he is — ^but he lacks the 
 income. He gets into an inflated style of living 
 and blows up. It is at best a happy-go-lucky 
 sort of a life, but the happiest in it are those 
 who do not pin too much faith on the luck end. 
 
 Another trouble with the newspaper game is 
 the jealousy of the men in it. A gathering of 
 
NEWSPAPEE MAN 235 
 
 newspaper men is like a gathering of soubrettes 
 — few people in it can see anybody but them- 
 selves. If any man sticks his head above the 
 universal level of the grass in which all are 
 traveling they all take a clout at that head. 
 Almost all praise is given grudgingly. You'd 
 think to hear them talk that any man who does 
 a big story well did it well by accident, and not 
 by any means so well as it would have been done 
 had the speaker had the chance. They are the 
 greatest gossips in the world, which is natural, 
 for their business is to find out things about 
 people and they cannot print half they find out. 
 Then, too, their mode of life is irregular and 
 they are a sort of people by themselves, for 
 if there is any one thing the ordinary person 
 is mystified about it is the making of a news- 
 paper. 
 
 Admitting all this — admitting that newspaper 
 work is disappointing in its rewards ; that it is 
 essentially an occupation for young men; that 
 men who get old in it are likely to be shoved 
 aside; that the pay is not commensurate with 
 
236 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 the labor and the intelligence required; that 
 reputation secured in it is temporary ; that the 
 grind saps strength ; that the life has a tendency 
 to invite the forming of ruinous habits ; that it 
 deprives its follower of an opportunity for social 
 enjo^nnent; that young men become old in it 
 quickly and that old men become useless; that 
 a single mistake may mean the loss of a posi- 
 tion; that business-office rules may prevent 
 truth-telling; that special interests may have 
 to be conserved ; that it is the hardest work on 
 earth — I still contend that newspaper work in 
 his country offers an exceptional advantage to 
 the young man who has an aptitude for it. 
 
 By aptitude for it I do not mean an abnor- 
 mally endowed nose for news — most of that sort 
 of thing is fake anyhow — or a tremendous talent 
 for writing. What I mean is that a young man, 
 to make a success of it, must have the strength 
 of will to work unceasingly hard for years, 
 strength of character enough to keep his habits 
 reasonably within bounds, and strength of de- 
 termination enough to go at his business with 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 237 
 
 the desire to learn it thoroughly, not take it 
 slap-dash and, for that reason, after he has 
 slap-dashed himself out, remain at the thirty 
 or forty dollar level. 
 
 No matter how good he is, he will never get 
 rich at it ; that side of the business may as well 
 be dismissed from the mind. But he will live 
 a life that is full of interest; he will see all 
 there is to be seen, meet all worth meeting ; be 
 a part of all great a:ffairs ; exert a weighty in- 
 fluence through his reporting ; have a potential 
 power he never will realize, but which will be 
 there just the same; have more fun and get 
 enough to live well on; and, if he has applied 
 himself to the mechanics of his business, has 
 stored in his mind the fruits of his experiences, 
 has conserved the acquaintances and friendships 
 he has made, will be ready to stand aside for 
 the younger man when he can no longer com- 
 pete with the dash of youth and step immedi- 
 ately into a wider and more profitable and, if 
 possible, more useful field. 
 
 The fault isn't with the newspaper business — 
 
238 THE MAKING OF A 
 
 it is with the men in it. The rewards are there, 
 just as certainly as they are in banking or in 
 any profession ; not so munificent, perhaps, but 
 big enough to satisfy any one, and the life is 
 so much more interesting, so much more varied, 
 the perspective is so much greater, the view is 
 so much broader that the compensations are 
 more than adequate. If you want money keep 
 out. It isn't in the game. But if you want ex- 
 perience, to know life in all its phases, to know 
 men and either make or destroy them, to be 
 in touch with what is happening, go in. 
 
 Moreover, it is a better business, a cleaner 
 business than it was. The old days of the 
 frowsy, alleged-bohemian, drunken reporter and 
 editor have passed. The present-day reporter 
 is an honorable, clean, self-respecting man, 
 working honorably and cleanly. There is no 
 business in this country where so much for the 
 public good can be done and is done. 
 
 In my opinion newspaper work offers better 
 opportunities, aside from the accumulation of 
 money, for real, serviceable, result-getting labor 
 
NEWSPAPER MAN 239 
 
 than any other business or profession a young 
 man may choose. Since I secured my first place, 
 twenty-five years ago, the standards of the men 
 in it, and also of the newspapers, have im- 
 measurably improved. They will keep improv- 
 ing. The work is hard, the pay is not large, 
 but the advantages are many and the oppor- 
 tunities are waiting. 
 
 The End 
 
NOV 30 1912 
 
 LRBMy'26 
 
LIBRARY OF COSSll" 
 
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